Implementation of a Physics-Based Model for Half-Cell Open-Circuit Potential and Full-Cell Open-Circuit Voltage Estimates: Part I. Processing Half-Cell Data

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Physics-based electrochemical models of lithium-ion cells require knowledge of electrode open-circuit potential (OCP) as a function of stoichiometry. To determine the OCP relationships for a cell built from unknown active materials, we might run low-rate constant-current laboratory tests on half cells built from harvested electrodes to collect related discharge and charge data. However, processing data from these tests must overcome three problems: the “data-quality problem,” the “missing-data problem,” and the “inaccessible-lithium problem.” This paper introduces a simple histogram-based method to overcome the data-quality problem and compares five different approaches to overcome the missing-data and inaccessible-lithium problems. These methods rely in part on a physics-based thermodynamic model for multiple-species multiple-reaction (MSMR) systems, which is flexible enough to accommodate different cell chemistries and simple enough to be utilized in real-time battery management systems. The five methods are validated in simulations and are then applied to physical half-cell data to produce OCP estimates for graphite and NMC electrodes from a commercial cell.