Simulation of Battery Cycling of Different Electrode Architectures Using Porous Electrode Theory

Lithium-ion batteries are attractive as a form of energy storage for various applications (e.g. power grid storage, electric vehicles, and portable electronics) because of their rechargeability, high energy density and high power density. The most adopted model to simulate ionic transport and electrochemical reactions in lithium-ion batteries is the porous electrode theory, which accounts for the mean structural properties of porous electrode architectures in lithium-ion batteries, such as tortuosity and porosity. One recent approach to optimizing battery cycling performance is to engineer the porous electrode architectures with either expanded ranges or increased control of structural parameters. However, there has been limited analysis of these recently developed electrode architectures showing the quantitative relationship between battery performance and structural parameters using the porous electrode theory. Here, to solve this issue, we utilize the LIONSIMBA MATLAB software suite and the COMSOL Lithium-Ion Battery Modeling software suite, both pseudo 2-D, finite volume method-based simulation frameworks based on the porous electrode theory, to simulate the battery cycling of lithium cobalt oxide/graphite based lithium-ion batteries by changing four structural parameters: electrode thickness, solid diffusion length, tortuosity of electrolyte diffusion path, and active material fraction in the electrode. These parameter sets are chosen from experimentally feasible parameter ranges of three engineered electrode architectures: conventional slurry, particle aligned slurry particles, and direct light processing-derived electrodes. In addition, we observe the performance of each simulated lithium-ion battery cell per set of parameters by calculating the capacity, energy density, and power density of each simulated cell, and additionally note which sets lead to failed convergence. The results of this work will lead to insight on which electrode architecture may lead to higher performance and perhaps eventually replace conventional industry architectures; future research can be done to experimentally validate these simulation results.