Modeling of discharge behavior of a lithium ion cell

The demand for better and advanced batteries by portable electronic users has created a dynamic research interest in improving the currently available lithium battery systems. Most of these batteries employ porous electrodes because of the nature of the porous materials that are able to provide large surface areas for the high performance of electrochemical processes. Therefore, batteries developers need to understand the transport and reaction behavior of porous electrodes in order to improve and manufacture better batteries. Hence, battery modeling becomes a useful tool in understanding the battery performance behavior. Mathematical modeling has been extensively used in treating the complex and simultaneous reactions occurring in porous electrodes and predicting battery performance under various operation requirements. In this work, a mathematical model is used to describe the material balance in the cathode of a lithium ion cell. This model is used to describe the lithium ion intercalation profile during discharge and to derive the expression for the cell potential. The resulting theoretical expression for voltage is plotted against rate.