Panasonic develops new battery management technology

Panasonic announced on Thursday that it has developed a new battery management technology which measures the Electrochemical Impedance of multi-cell stacked batteries.

The technology is expected to be applied to various devices that use lithium-ion battery modules with many battery cells stacked in series and to future vehicles. It would contribute to the realisation of a sustainable society by helping facilitate reuse and recycling of lithium-ion batteries.

The technology has been developed in collaboration with Professor Masahiro Fukui of Ritsumeikan University. While a new battery monitoring IC (BMIC) test chip, measurement algorithm, and software were developed by Panasonic, the Ritsumeikan University contributed to the evaluation of the performance using actual batteries.

Current applications of lithium-ion batteries are expanding to the field of industrial devices and mobility, and the importance of reuse and recycling is also increasing. The newly developed battery management technology makes it possible to measure electrochemical impedance using the AC current excitation method for lithium-ion stacked battery modules that are installed in operating devices.

Furthermore, this technology aims to enable the evaluation of residual value by way of a deterioration diagnosis and failure estimation based on an analysis of acquired measurement data. This will contribute to the realisation of a sustainable society where future lithium-ion batteries can be reused and recycled.

Conventional electrochemical impedance spectroscopy is widely used as a non-destructive method for evaluating lithium-ion batteries. This measurement method requires an application-specific measuring instrument and a large thermostatic chamber that keeps the temperature of the battery constant, and it was necessary to measure each cell in the laboratory.

The newly developed BMIC test chip has a built-in electrochemical impedance measurement function using the AC current excitation method in addition to these conventional functions.