LBM prediction of effective electric and species transport properties of lithium-ion battery graphite anode

Numerical models play a vital role in the developing and performance optimization of lithium-ion batteries. The key factor to the prediction accuracy of macro-scale models is the specification of effective transport properties. This study, based on the anisotropic microstructure of graphite anode reconstructed by an ellipsoid-based simulated annealing method (SAM), established a mesoscopic model of diffusion process to predict the effective electric and species transport properties of lithium-ion battery graphite anode via lattice-Boltzmann (LB) method. The effect of particle size on the transport properties of graphite anode was discussed in detail. In the electrode through-plane direction, if the ellipsoidal particles are thinner and flatter, both the effective electric and species transport properties decrease; in the other two directions, the effective electronic charge transport properties barely change with the change of particle size while the effective species transport properties increase along with the increase of the size of particles. In addition, to get a more accurate replica of the real graphite anode, we assumed the sizes of solid particles follow a normal distribution and reconstructed the microstructure of electrode. The LB calculation results reveal that the normal distribution of particle size increases the electronic charge conductivity in the electrode through-plane direction and decreases in the other two directions, compared to the electrode of constant-sized particles; the effective species diffusivities (or ionic charge conductivities) in electrode through-plane direction for different microstructures are closer.