Fast Charging Batteries via Electrochemical Model-based Control

Title: Fast Charging Batteries via ElectroChemical Model-Based Control In telecommunications, there were 5.2B active mobile handsets and over 1.7B mobile phone sales worldwide for 2012. Mobile phones are also a powerful tool for solving poverty and financial inequity in third world countries. In electrified transportation, there were 53,000 were plug-in electric vehicles sold in the U.S. for 2012. Despite growing sales, range anxiety is considered the largest inhibitor of electrified transportation. Significant reduction in charge times, e.g. comparable to filling a gas tank, would eliminate this obstacle and consequently reduce emissions and oil dependence. It is clear that fast charging increases the practicality of mobile devices and electric vehicles. However, it can also decrease cycle life depending on the charging method used. Traditionally, batteries are charged via a constant current/constant voltage (CCCV) protocol. A typical mobile phone requires 47 minutes to charge from 0-50%. However, it is well-known within the academic and industrial communities that alternative protocols can reduce charge times. Such alternatives, however, are almost always heuristic, without any provably optimal properties or safe constraint satisfaction guarantees. This research project pursues a drastically different and potentially transformative approach. This research seeks to significantly reduce Li-ion battery charge times by developing control theoretic foundations for electrochemical model-based control. Mathematically, this is formulated as minimizing charge time subject to constraints on estimated electro-chemical variables associated with aging.