Numerical Simulation of Prismatic Lithium-Ion Battery Life Cycles Under a Wide Range of Temperature

Abstract

The thermo-electrochemical characteristics of prismatic lithium-ion batteries is numerically simulated to quantify the degradation and thermal runaway at wide temperature range from − 40 to 80 °C and 150 °C. The numerical simulation describes the effect of temperature on the cell voltage, overpotential and heat generation during charge/discharge process. It is found that the subzero temperature significantly degrades the charge and discharge efficiencies due to high overpotentials while the efficiencies remain constant above 20 °C. Nonetheless, considerable decrease of energy storage capacity is expected above 40 °C. The battery can retain 10% of the nominal energy storage capacity after 1000 charge–discharge cycles when it operates under 80 °C. In addition, thermal runaway also numerically simulated by assuming the accidental temperature of 150 °C. The high temperature causes excessive heat generation during charge/discharge cycles and vice versa. The resulting battery temperature rises to 245 °C which exceeds melting-down temperature of the battery materials to cause combustion or explosion. The thermal behavior of the lithium-ion battery simulated in the study can serve as a guidance for advanced thermal management and strategy.