EV Battery Repurposing
IBS aims at providing Second Life Batteries (SLB) retired from EV for repurposed applications such as stationary energy storage systems (ESSs).
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Make ESS More Affordable.
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Enable Deployment of Renewables.
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Avoid 73 kg of GHG emission per kWh from manufacturing.
Five Steps of Repurposing.
1 / Incoming Assessment
When shipped to the reuse company, historical information of the retired battery systems, including manufacturers, models, batches and dates of production, types of batteries (nominal capacities, nominal voltage, chemistry, etc.), operation history, and reasons for retirement (reaching EOL, damage, safety concern, etc.), should be registered.
2 / Disassembly
The entire battery module is torn down, and individual battery cells are obtained. For this purpose, multiple steps in a proper sequence have to be carried out to remove the components and fasteners.
3 / Performance Evaluation
All the steps after the disassembly are usually referred to as "screening, sorting, and classifying." The overall purpose of these steps is to screen out the cells that cannot meet the requirements of second-life applications and regroup the batteries with a close level of degradation and similar electrochemical performances.
4 / Sorting and Regrouping
With data from assessment tests, it is now possible to sort and regroup batteries according to their performance. The major task is to reduce the cell-to-cell (and module-to-module, if reused at a module level) variations, which are harmful to the battery life.
5 / Developing Control Strategies
Specific control and energy management strategies are necessary to deal with the low energy and power capabilities, large inconsistencies, and potential safety concerns when integrating retired batteries from different EVs into a single stationary ESS.
IBS Battery Repurposing Technology
We have developed a measuring and testing solution, including equipment and protocols. It enables work to be carried out on each cell rapidly and conveniently while they are remaining connected in the battery module or pack, such as measuring the residual capacity and State of Health (SoH), and rebalancing State of Charge (SoC). Therefore, with minimums cost, we can quickly perform step # 3 in the module and pack level, and categories them into following classes:
I: can be directly reused or repurposed (restore the overall capacity of modules and packs lost due to unequaled SoC if necessary).
II: can be reused or repurposed by only changing few cells.
III: can be dissembled to retain useful cells.
IV: not worth dissemble and direct recycle.
This solution enables us to minimize the amount of disassembly work and maximize the percentage of directly reused and repurposed modules and systems, therefore the repurpose cost is reduced.
