Electrochemical Analytic Diagnosis (eCAD) for Battery Cell Qualification

 TECHNOLOGY LICENSING OPPORTUNITY 

Electrochemical Analytic Diagnosis (eCAD) for Battery Cell Qualification 

eCAD is a new battery cell qualification technology that provides a more robust, reliable, and predictive approach than traditional design-build-test practices. 

Opportunity: Idaho National Laboratory (INL), managed and operated by Battelle Energy Alliance, LLC (BEA), is offering the opportunity to enter into a license and/or collaborative research agreement to apply the electrochemical analytic diagnosis technology in commercial applications. 

Overview: Currently, battery manufacturers and power system integrators use testing results of battery cells as the basis for the sorting, selection, and grouping of cells of similar quality to conduct quality control and quality assurance (QC/QA), generally known as the “cell qualification” process. This cell qualification process in the conventional design-build-test (DBT) product development cycle is not a robust or reliable method, nor does it ensure consistency in performance and compliance, while removing uncertainty and risk. Conventional DBT approach is resource limited, time-consuming, and costly. Testing requires a heavy investment in equipment, facility, and personnel training. The data obtained from this testing is prone to bias, error, and complexity by influences from test conditions. These factors increase production costs and risk of cell failure. 

Description: Researchers at INL have developed the electrochemical analytic diagnosis (eCAD) technology, a fundamentally different approach from those of empirical data regressions and comparisons in the DBT paradigm. The eCAD technology uses fundamental principles such as thermodynamic states of the cell as the basis to transform and analyze the data from the battery testing to identify and quantify 

battery performance failure modes and effects. The failure quantification results are used to define metrics for cell design specification and accurately predict the performance of the design as a prognosis model to help battery prototyping and manufacturing. The eCAD technology can streamline the entire product “design-prototype-production-deployment” (DPPD) cycle with easy-to-validate results and predictive models for cell qualification. eCAD also provides a new paradigm as an “analysis-qualification-design-verification” (AQDV) loop for future battery DPPD cycle is incorporated. This approach will drastically reduce design cost and accelerates the time to market for new cell designs and productions. 

Benefits: 

• • Compared to traditional DBT approaches, the AQDV loop enhanced DPPD cycle offers: o More robust cell design principles verification 
• o More reliable cell qualification mechanism to ensure QC/QA 
• o More predictable results for production and deployment to allow tracking of failures and risk mitigation 

Applications: 

• • • Battery cell qualification: o Battery manufacturing 
  • o Power system integration 
  • • Battery cell design verification 
  • • Battery manufacturing QC/QA 
  • • Battery failure and warranty tracking for risk mitigation and litigation 

Development Status: TRL 4. Key principles are validated. Currently undergoing proof-of-concept for the entire DPPD cycle at small scale with further testing and verification. 

IP Status: US Patent Application No. 17/149,046, “Energy storage cell qualification and related systems, methods, and devices,” BEA Docket No. BA-1147. 

INL is seeking to license the above intellectual property to a company with a demonstrated ability to bring such inventions to the market. Exclusive rights in defined fields of use may be available. 

Please visit Technology Deployment’s website at https://inl.gov/inl-initiatives/technology-deployment for more information on working with INL and the industrial partnering and technology transfer process. 

Companies interested in learning more about this licensing opportunity should contact Ryan Bills at td@inl.gov.