Thermal Characterisation of Automotive-Sized Lithium-Ion Pouch Cells Using Thermal Impedance Spectroscopy

This study used thermal impedance spectroscopy to measure a 46 Ah high-power lithium-ion pouch cell, introducing a testing setup for automotive-sized cells to extract the relevant thermal parameters, reducing the time for thermal characterisation in the complete operational range. The results are validated by measuring the heat capacity using an easy-to-implement calorimetric measurement method. For the investigated cell at 50% state of charge and an ambient temperature of 25 °C, values for the specific heat capacity of 1.25 J/(kgK) and the cross-plane thermal conductivity of 0.47 W/(mK) are obtained. For further understanding, the values were measured at different states of charge and at different ambient temperatures, showing a notable dependency only on the thermal conductivity from the temperature of −0.37%/K. Also, a comparison of the cell with a similar-sized 60 Ah high-energy cell is investigated, comparing the influence of the cell structure to the thermal behaviour of commercial cells. This observation shows about 15% higher values in heat capacity and cross-plane thermal conductivity for the high-energy cell. Consequently, the presented setup is a straightforward implementation to accurately obtain the required model parameters, which could be used prospectively for module characterisation and investigating thermal propagation through the cells.