ECS Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship To Develop More Sustainable EV Batteries
MIE Assistant Professor Juner Zhu is one of only three individuals to receive an Electrochemical Society Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship this year. He will conduct research to assess the condition of batteries in electric vehicles using mechano-electrochemical techniques that will identify a battery’s physical changes to determine its overall health.
Juner Zhu, assistant professor, mechanical and industrial engineering, received an Electrochemical Society (ECS) Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship, one of only three individuals this year to receive this award, which is focused on green energy technology.
Zhu will develop technology to monitor and identify the health of individual batteries in an electric vehicle (EV). EVs run on battery packs that are made up of many individual batteries. Zhu intends to use a mechano-electrochemical approach that would use sensors to gather data on a battery’s physical changes. The data would then be analyzed using machine learning techniques to determine a battery’s condition, patterns of deterioration, or other problems.
If data is collected and analyzed in a timely and precise manner, it can improve the overall management of the electric vehicle’s battery pack by giving drivers more detailed information on how much life remains in a battery, if there is damage and how significant it may be, and if it is worth saving or recycling and when to do so.
This information can bring efficiencies or even reduce some of the more labor-intensive and potentially unsafe processes involving EV batteries—the handling, transporting, recycling, and disposing phases.
“Many people think the difficulty is with the chemical engineering of batteries, but some of the more straightforward steps are the most challenging, like getting a battery pack to a recycling center,” Zhu says.
Currently, battery packs last several years and are not often replaced. But with the proliferation of electric cars—estimates suggest more than 30 million could be on the road by 2030—having effective battery lifecycle management will impact sustainability and reduce unnecessary waste.
Zhu says using an approach grounded in mechanical engineering will supplement any electrical or chemical analysis by identifying physical changes. “We observed that during the charge or discharge of the battery, it acts like the human body breathing, it expands and comes back, expands and comes back.”
Overtime, the ability of the battery to return to its optimal state degrades after irreversible swelling, and the overall health of the battery permanently declines, Zhu notes.
Zhu will use inexpensive, commercially available sensors to gather data by measuring the pressure exerted on the battery surface from the swelling. Battery issues will be identified more quickly and accurately by applying machine learning processes to data, ultimately enabling a more accurate diagnosis.
Current EV technology provides a battery status to drivers, but it is typically based on a predictive model as opposed to the voltage and current data acquired and analyzed, Zhu says.