Temperature, Ageing and Thermal Management of Lithium-Ion Batteries

Heat generation and therefore thermal transport plays a critical role in ensuring performance, ageing and safety for lithium-ion batteries (LIB). Increased battery temperature is the most important ageing accelerator. Understanding and managing temperature and ageing for batteries in operation is thus a multiscale challenge, ranging from the micro/nanoscale within the single material layers to large, integrated LIB packs. This paper includes an extended literature survey of experimental studies on commercial cells investigating the capacity and performance degradation of LIB. It compares the degradation behavior in terms of the influence of operating conditions for different chemistries and cell sizes. A simple thermal model for linking some of these parameters together is presented as well. While the temperature appears to have a large impact on ageing acceleration above room temperature during cycling for all studied cells, the effect of SOC and C rate appear to be rather cell dependent.Through the application of new simulations, it is shown that during cell testing, the actual cell temperature can deviate severely from the reported temperature depending on the thermal management during testing and C rate. It is shown, that the battery lifetime reduction at high C rates can be for large parts due to an increase in temperature especially for high energy cells and poor cooling during cycling studies. Measuring and reporting the actual battery (surface) temperature allow for a proper interpretation of results and transferring results from laboratory experiments to real applications.

Automated summary

Heat generation and thermal transport are crucial for the performance, ageing, and safety of lithium-ion batteries. The paper reviews experimental studies on commercial cells to understand capacity and performance degradation, comparing the influence of operating conditions for different chemistries and cell sizes. The study also highlights the importance of accurately measuring and managing cell temperature for better battery performance and lifespan.