Aging Determination of Series-Connected Lithium-Ion Cells Independent of Module Design

In this work, a battery consisting of eight commercial NMC/graphite cells connected in series was cycled to 60% of its initial capacity. During the test, special care was taken to ensure that the results were not influenced by either the module assembly or the module design. For this purpose, the cells were virtually connected in a laboratory environment with the help of the test device as if they were operated together in a battery. Extrinsic influences that affect cell aging were thus reduced to a minimum. Differential Voltage Analysis (DVA), Electrochemical Impedance Spectrum (EIS), and relaxation measurements were performed to analyze the aging behavior of each cell. The results show that despite a theoretically perfect module design, Cell-to-Cell Variations (CtCV) occurred during aging. The shifting Depth of Discharge (DoD) values among the cells further amplify CtCV. Lithium plating was also observed in the faster aging cells after cyclic aging, suggesting that this aging effect contributes significantly to the development of CtCV. After the aging test, the battery was equipped with an active balancing system that maximizes capacity utilization. More important, the balancing charges which are calculated iteratively within the used balancing algorithm show a strong correlation to the pure capacity losses and thus provide a new way to determine the capacity values of each cell individually without disassembling the battery.