Innovative heating of large-size automotive Li-ion cells

Xiao Guang Yang, Teng Liu, Chao Yang Wang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

83 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Automotive Li-ion cells are becoming much larger and thicker in order to reduce the cell count and increase battery reliability, posing a new challenge to battery heating from the cold ambient due to poor through-plane heat transfer across a cell's multiple layers of electrodes and separators. In this work, widely used heating methods, including internal heating using the cell's resistance and external heating by resistive heaters, are compared with the recently developed self-heating Li-ion battery (SHLB) with special attention to the heating speed and maximum local temperature critical to battery safety. Both conventional methods are found to be slow due to low heating power required to maintain battery safety. The heating power in the external heating method is limited by the risk of local over-heating, in particular for thick cells. As a result, the external heating method is restricted to ∼20 min slow heating for a 30 °C temperature rise. In contrast, the SHLB is demonstrated to reach a heating speed of 1–2 °C/sec, ∼40 times faster for large-size thick cells, with nearly 100% heating efficiency and spatially uniform heating free from safety concerns.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)598-604
Number of pages7
JournalJournal of Power Sources
Volume342
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Automotive
  • Heating
  • Li-ion cell
  • Low temperatures

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Yang, X. G., Liu, T., & Wang, C. Y. (2017). Innovative heating of large-size automotive Li-ion cells. Journal of Power Sources, 342, 598-604. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2016.12.102