(293f) Thermal Management of Lithium-Ion Batteries and Control Strategies

Lithium-ion batteries continue to be the predominant energy storage device for hand-held and portable electronics due to their high energy density and specific energy relative to other rechargeable battery devices which are based on lead-acid, nickel metal hydride, and other storage cell technologies. In recent years, there has also been a growing interest by automotive manufactures in the use of lithium-ion batteries as potential sources of power for electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) [1, 3, 6]. The demand for higher performance batteries for applications within both of the electronics and automotive industries has placed pressure on battery manufacturers to improve on existing lithium-ion battery technology, and has resulted in a large amount of research in design, fabrication, and implementation.

One of the main challenges faced by both manufacturers and industries which utilize lithium-ion batteries, is the thermal effects on battery performance [1, 6]. Detrimental thermal effects on lithium-ion batteries, which includes self-discharge, capacity and power fade, cycle performance degradation, and thermal runaway, are further magnified in scale-up cell designs for energy intensive applications. In particular, the high discharge rates and rapid charge and discharge cycling in high-performance electronic devices, and required of in EVs and HEVs, lead to distributed temperature fluctuations exceeding optimal or permissible levels, and present major operational and safety concerns [5]. The temperature dynamics are due to complex interactions between electrochemical heat generating reactions, charge distributions, and temperature fields within individual cells and between multiple cells in the case of multi-cell battery packs. There have been many thermal models developed to describe and characterize the origins of heat generation and the overall transport phenomena, which range from lumped parameter models, empirical models, systems of partial differential equations derived from mass and energy balance relations, as well as combinations of these aforementioned approaches [1, 2, 4, 7].

In this work, we report on model based control strategies in the thermal management of lithium-ion battery devices to mitigate the thermal effects on performance, and to ensure safety and reliability under various operating conditions. The practical use of passive control strategies (e.g. battery geometry design, materials, and ambient air/liquid flow) and also active control methodologies (model based feedback/feedforward control to determine air/liquid flow) will be discussed and accompanied by numerical simulations.

References:

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