Design and analysis of Lithium-ion pouch cell with LMO-NMC blended cathode using coupled thermo-electro-chemical model

In this study, a Lithium-ion pouch cell is studied considering a blended cathode, made of dual intercalating cathode materials. The proposed battery designs are thoroughly investigated through the pseudo-two-dimensional thermo-electro-chemical coupled model, developed with the help of the COMSOL Multiphysics computational tool. Therefore, the major objective of this study is to analyse the thermo-electro-chemical performance of Lithium-ion pouch cell made of LMO-NMC blended cathodes, for different electrode designs arrived by varying the design parameters. The battery performance attributes include: discharge voltage, energy capacity, power output, and heat generation. Furthermore, a parametric study on the design parameters of blended electrode, such as: thickness of electrode, particle radius, volume fraction of active material, and blend ratio is also carried out to study their influence on the battery performance. The results indicate that the cell with blended cathode incorporates the properties of its constituent materials. A 50:50 LMO-NMC blended cathode is observed to improve the energy capacity of the cell by 26.48% with respect to the cell with LMO cathode. Also, at 10C discharge rate, the improvement in capacity utilization and reduction in heat generation are observed to be 12.87% and 12.77%, respectively, as compared to the cell with NMC cathode. Furthermore, all the electrode design parameters are found to significantly influence the battery performance, particularly at higher discharge rates. Moreover, inter dependency among the design parameters has also been identified. Therefore, the present study can help the designers of Lithium-ion batteries to come up with efficient designs considering blended cathodes.