Center for Fuel Cells and Batteries
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Item Adaptive Thermal Control of Cell Groups to Extend Cycle Life of Lithium-Ion Battery Packs(Applied Sciences, 2023-04-07) Connor, Wesley D.; Advani, Suresh G.; Prasad, Ajay K.We present a novel approach for a battery management system in which adaptive thermal control is employed to balance the capacities of individual groups of cells within a lithium-ion battery pack. Maintaining capacity balance within the battery pack in this manner can significantly extend its cycle life. We explore the physical implementation of this concept and demonstrate that it is a viable way to extend the life of battery packs. The experimental setup consists of three pairs of cells connected electrically in series and supplied with coolant flow from a chiller. All cells are initially in capacity balance and are cooled uniformly for the first 50 fast charge/discharge cycles. Subsequently, cooling is halted to specific cell pairs to deliberately unbalance their capacities. Finally, cooling is selectively restored to correct the capacity imbalance between the cell groups by the end of 100 charge/discharge cycles. These results suggest that adaptive thermal control can be used effectively to maintain capacity balance within the battery pack.Item Biosourced Antioxidants for Chemical Durability Enhancement of Perfluorosulfonic Acid Membrane(Advanced Functional Materials, 2024-01-02) Agarwal, Tanya; Adhikari, Santosh; Babu, Siddharth Komini; Prasad, Ajay K.; Advani, Suresh G.; Borup, Rodney L.The chemical durability of perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) membranes is a topic of growing interest to meet Department of Energy (DOE) durability targets for heavy-duty vehicle (HDV) applications. State-of-the-art membranes like Nafion, rely on the use of cerium, heteropolyacids, and other inorganic additives to increase PFSA chemical durability. A less explored avenue for the oxidative stabilization of PFSA and hydrocarbon membranes is the use of organic antioxidants. No reversible organic antioxidant has been demonstrated to date which can enhance membrane lifetime by factors comparable to cerium. Here, ellagic acid (EA) is demonstrated as a promising radical scavenger for PFSA's. It is found that the incorporation of EA enhances the chemical durability of Nafion by 160%. EA, when incorporated with cerium as an electron donorenhances Nafion durability by at least 80% compared to a membrane incorporated with just cerium in DOE-defined durability tests. EA is found to be reversible in acidic conditions like those of fuel cells and its reversibility could be further enhanced by the use of suitable co-antioxidants.