Tampere University Background
CeLLife answers the problem of the growing amount of e-waste from rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. Currently used batteries become a burden for their owner when they need to be recycled. Batteries are crushed and material is recovered. A lot of work and energy is wasted in this manner, because up to 90 percent of the individual battery cells inside a battery pack are still reusable in second-life application. Usually a battery fails due to small number of aged cells or an electronics failure, while most of the cells are still in good condition. This happens through normal ageing mechanisms of lithium-ion cells which is not identical for each cell. Battery cells and modules used in electric vehicles find their natural second life for example in stationary energy storages and charging buffers for electric vehicles.
Technology Overview
CeLLife technology is used to measure the electrical fingerprints of individual lithium-ion battery cells and battery modules. Differences in electrical fingerprints within the same battery pack will cause failure and abnormal heating due to circulating currents and uneven temperature distribution. The battery will lose its capacity faster and will fail much sooner than planned. Mismatched battery cells degrade at accelerated rate due to increased thermal stress, which also increases the likelihood of thermal runaway leading to fire. The same principles apply to battery modules when they are connected to form large energy storage. CeLLife technology enables matching identical cells into a second-life battery pack. Furthermore, the method can be applied to new battery packs to extend their lifetime in their first application.
Benefits
Improve safety by preventing poor-performing and over-heating second-life batteries from entering the market
Prevent temperature and current unbalance inside a second-life battery
Longer lifetime and lower temperature of a second-life battery
Longer lifetime of a new battery pack
Applications
Sorting and matching of used lithium-ion battery cells for the purpose of building second-life battery packs. Regardless of the form factor.
Sorting and matching of used battery modules for the purpose of up-scaling them to charging buffers and large energy storages.
Sorting and matching of new battery cells and modules for the purpose of building high quality battery packs for electric vehicles, battery energy storages and more.