Could a New Charge Double the Service-life of Li-Ion Batteries? (sciencedaily.com)
- Reference: 0173516574
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/04/14/020205/could-a-new-charge-double-the-service-life-of-li-ion-batteries
- Source link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/04/240409123909.htm
> The best commercial lithium-ion batteries...have a service life of up to eight years. Batteries are usually charged with a constant current flow. But is this really the most favorable method? A new study by Prof. Philipp Adelhelm's group at HZB and Humboldt-University Berlin answers this question clearly with "no." [In collaboration with teams including the Technical University of Berlin.]
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> Part of the battery tests were carried out at Aalborg University. The batteries were either charged conventionally with constant current (CC) or with a new charging protocol with pulsed current (PC). Post-mortem analyses revealed clear differences after several charging cycles: In the CC samples, the solid electrolyte interface (SEI) at the anode was significantly thicker, which impaired the capacity... PC-charging led to a thinner SEI interface and fewer structural changes in the electrode materials.
The study is [2]published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials and analyzes the effect of the charging protocol on the service time of the battery, according to the article. "The frequency of the pulsed current counts..."
"Doubling the life of your EV's battery or even your smartphone's battery is no small thing," says Slashdot reader [3]NewtonsLaw ...
[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/04/240409123909.htm
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/aenm.202400190
[3] https://slashdot.org/~NewtonsLaw
Doubling? RTFM (Score:1)
The study doesn't say anything about doubling, improvements are shown in the range of 5-35%
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The article says this: "High-frequency PC charging protocols with square-wave current extend the service life of commercial LIBs the most, with a doubled cycle life (with 80% capacity retention) achieved in this study."
I did read it. (Score:3)
> These studies have been carried out for batteries with various electrodes (NMC, LFP, and LCO) and battery formats (coin cell, pouch cell, and cylindrical cell) and show promising results, demonstrating the potential of PC charging for improving battery stability by a significant margin, ranging from 0.5% to 34% , as depicted in Figure 1.
Stability is different than the lifetime of the battery as the opening of the conclusion should have made it clear.
> In this study, we show that pulse current charging can significantly enhance the cycling stability of commercial NMC532/graphite batteries and prolong their cycle life (from 500 cycles to >1000 cycles).
Now... which one of us didn't RTFM?
Talk To The Electric R\C Modellers. (Score:2)
Those guys are experts at getting the maximum output out of cells. For like decades. It started back with Ni-cad's and has progressed up to the latest tech there is.
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They are also fine with a battery occasionally blowing up and lifetime is not much of a factor. This article is about _lifetime_, not output.
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Wrong. They have a full variety of needs and applications for the cells. A failed cell usually means a very expensive model crashing to the ground in a total loss that may have taken hundreds of hours to complete and costs thousands of dollars. If anyone cares about losing a cell it's these guys.
And here I thought it was about dendrites (Score:2)
When I started reading the description, I felt sure that they were going to say that pulsed charging burned up the tips of the dendrites that form inside the batteries, thus inhibiting their growth, but we've known that for [1]a decade [acs.org]. So my initial reaction was "Yeah, no kidding, of course it will." But unless I'm misunderstanding, this is yet a second, unrelated reason to do so.
The only real question is why we haven't been doing it for a decade. Unless some a**hole took out a patent on it or something.
[1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jz500207a
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> The only real question is why we haven't been doing it for a decade.
Simple: Fossile fuel interests (a.k.a. people that do not care they destroy the ecosphere as long as it makes them money) have no interest in batteries getting better. In fact, they are outright opposed to it. Same for smartphone-makers that did their best to make batteries non-replaceable so they can sell more phones. Hence getting funding for research like this is difficult.
Clearly evil, but that is what greed does to weak people.
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>> The only real question is why we haven't been doing it for a decade.
> Simple: Fossile fuel interests (a.k.a. people that do not care they destroy the ecosphere as long as it makes them money) have no interest in batteries getting better.
Yeah, but electronics manufacturers and companies like Tesla *do* have an interest in doing that, and research papers have been showing benefits from this approach for a really long time. That paper I linked was published in 2014, literally a decade ago. It's weird that nobody is doing that, unless there's some downside besides longer charging time.
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Dendrites is a problem for NiCd batteries. This study is about LiIon batteries where the problem if cracking in the medium the Li is embedded in and formation of a high resistance layer. According to the study, pulsed charging reduces both effects.
Spoiler alert (Score:2)
The effect is greatest with a 2KHz square wave. A 100 Hz square wave had a lesser but significant effect.
maybe no thing at all (Score:3)
"Doubling the life of your EV's battery or even your smartphone's battery is no small thing,"
And it may be a bigger thing that the trivial suggestion offered here. And also it may be valueless. How many smartphones benefit from a doubling of cycle life, if that were possible? And how does the charging profile interact with battery usage (which is much different for EVs and smartphones).
More interested in developments of the batteries themselves, not this.
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Not so fast. There are many scenarios where a life extending charge method could be really helpful, including cellphones and EVs. Perhaps you like to get a new cellphone after 2 years and don't think doubling the total life of the battery is worth it, but wouldn't you like it if your nearly 2 year old phone still held a charge like a nearly 1 year old phone? Don't you thing that at least for some people that might make it worthwhile to hold on to it for another year?
For EVs, one of the biggest worries is ho
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> "There are many scenarios where a life extending charge method could be really helpful"
And that holds true, even if it takes LONGER to charge (not saying it would). I have my Linux laptop and my Android phone both set to charge to 85% maximum to prolong life (unfortunately, no such setting for my smart watch). I also charge with a slower (lower amperage) charger on the phone, for the same reason. Also do that on my NiMH battery charger- lowest rate (even says in the manual that will prolong battery l
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I've had my iPhone for six years and have no plans to replace it. It has 80% of its original battery capacity, which is good enough to get me through the day.
When people replace phones, the old phones are often sent to developing countries, where they are refurbed and reused. So a longer battery life means that the batteries will be used for a long time by someone even if it isn't you.
But the big win is for EVs. People often keep cars for 20 years or more, and the other parts on an EV wear much less than an
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Agreed. I tend to keep a cellphone until it's dead. The last one I had went through a couple screen protectors and a new battery until one day it simply wouldn't connect to the cellular network anymore. I would certainly like an extended battery life, especially since the trend is towards harder to replace batteries now.
Since a phone can run from the charger when it's plugged in, a pulsed charging circuit wouldn't be all that complicated and shouldn't add much cost, even given the silly markups in play th
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No, it may not be "valueless". What crappy agenda are you trying to push?