Electrochemical-Engineering-Based Models for Lithium-Ion Batteries—Past, Present, and Future

Abstract

More than 25 years have passed since SONY commercialized the first Li-ion battery in 1990.1 Today, Li-ion batteries are prevalent in a wide gamut of applications including portable electronic devices, automobiles, energy storage, military, and space. The current push towards adopting renewable energy sources and electric vehicles have led to increased dependence on batteries. The critical needs for batteries with high power capabilities, high-energy storage capabilities, insensitivity to charging/discharging parameters, long lifetimes without significant degradation of performance, and portability with very small footprint/volume are increasing day by day. We make trade-offs to optimize their performance for a given application.Battery modeling plays a very important role in designing efficient, cost effective, and safe batteries. Mathematical modeling allows us to explore a wide variety of system parameters with a minimum expenditure of time and materials. This requires a certain amount of confidence in the ability of the model to describe the system properly. However, in any case, the optimum design identified in the modeling effort can be built, tested, and used as a first approximation to a truly optimized design.2 Empirical models employ past experimental data to predict future behavior of Li-ion batteries without the consideration of physicochemical principles. It is extremely important for the battery models to be based on the underlying physical phenomena to facilitate efficient cell design to develop better and more efficient batteries with existing technologies.The electrochemical engineering field has long employed macroscopic continuum models that incorporate chemical/ electrochemical kinetics and transport phenomena to produce more accurate predictions than empirical models. Electrochemical engineering models of Li-ion batteries have appeared in the literature for more than twenty years. This article will discuss the history of battery modeling and the current state-of-the-art. Electrochemical Engineering in Li-Ion Battery ModelsIn the 1950s, the first models for current and potential distribution in porous battery electrodes were developed.3 Major strides towards understanding the behavior of porous electrodes were made in the early 1960s with the development of porous electrode theory. 4 This generalized the earlier modeling efforts into a macro-homogeneous modeling framework that is still used in most models to this day. Later the governing equations for porous electrodes were presented by Newman and Tiedemann in 1975. 5 Newman also presented similar equations for applications to electrochemical systems in general. 6 The first attempts to model the processes occurring in Li-ion insertion based cells were developed in the 1980s. The earliest mathematical models for the composite insertion electrode was developed by West and his coworkers. 7,8 The model by West, et al., covered only a single porous electrode and did not have the advantages of a full-cell sandwich model. This model lacked the treatm...

Multi‐objective optimization of lithium‐ion battery pack casing for electric vehicles: Key role of materials design and their influence

“…If the mechanical performance of a battery pack casing cannot meet the requirements of real application, it may result in the short circuit even explosion or more severe accidents . Therefore, the mechanical performance of a battery pack casing is significant for batteries, electric vehicles, and road safety . In addition, lightweight is also considered as an objective which is necessary for less volume consumption and more extended driving range.…”