Development of Sustainable and Smart Battery Cells

There is a need to construct a robust battery circular economy to sustain this growth in the electric vehicle (EV) market. Currently, the process of triaging a battery pack at end of first-life is expensive, hazardous and time consuming, with limited prior knowledge of the life of the batteries. Smart cells (cells with embedded sensors, e.g., temperature/pressure) placed within a battery pack, can be used to better track state of health (SoH) during the first-life of the pack.

Potential objectives:

- Investigate design optimisations for smart cell sensors, such as construction materials, location, method of insertion, etc., to allow cells to enter a circular economy.

- Identify target sensor measurands, key events to log and an application-focused method to store/present data to ease battery triaging.

- Research design considerations to ready smart cell sensors for deployment in future batteries regardless of cell electrochemistry and format.