Lithium-ion batteries have been used extensively over the past two decades in the
portable consumer electronics industry. More recently, Li-ion batteries have become
candidates for much larger-scale applications such as electric vehicles and energy grid
storage, which impose much more stringent requirements on batteries, especially in terms
of cell lifetime. In order to develop batteries with improved lifetimes, a means of quickly
and accurately evaluating battery life is required. The use of coulombic efficiency (CE)
is an important tool in this regard, which provides a way to quantify parasitic reactions
occurring within the cell. As more stable battery chemistries are developed, the rates of
parasitic reactions occurring in the cell become reduced, and differences in CE among
cells become increasingly smaller. In order to resolve these differences, charger systems
must be developed which can measure CE with increased precision and accuracy.
This thesis investigates various ways to improve the precision and accuracy of CE
measurements. Using the high-precision charger (HPC) at Dalhousie University (built in
2009) as a starting point, a new prototype charger was built with several modifications to
the design of the existing HPC. The effect of each of these modifications is investigated
in detail to provide a blueprint for the development of next-generation charger systems.
This prototype charger shows greatly improved precision and accuracy, with CE results
that are approximately four times more precise than those of the existing HPC and over
an order of magnitude more precise than high-end commercially available charger
systems
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:NSHD.ca#10222/15867 |
| Date | 02 October 2012 |
| Creators | Bond, Toby Mishkin |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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