Extending battery life: A low-cost practical diagnostic technique for lithium-ion batteries

Modern applications of lithium-ion batteries such as smartphones, hybrid & electric vehicles and grid scale electricity storage demand long lifetime and high performance which typically makes them the limiting factor in a system. Understanding the state-of-health during operation is important in order to optimise for long term durability and performance. However, this requires accurate in-operando diagnostic techniques that are cost effective and practical. We present a novel diagnosis method based upon differential thermal voltammetry demonstrated on a battery pack made from commercial lithium-ion cells where one cell was deliberately aged prior to experiment. The cells were in parallel whilst being thermally managed with forced air convection. We show for the first time, a diagnosis method capable of quantitatively determining the state-of-health of four cells simultaneously by only using temperature and voltage readings for both charge and discharge. Measurements are achieved using low-cost thermocouples and a single voltage measurement at a frequency of 1 Hz, demonstrating the feasibility of implementing this approach on real world battery management systems. The technique could be particularly useful under charge when constant current or constant power is common, this therefore should be of significant interest to all lithium-ion battery users.