Batteries have been integral components in modern vehicles, initially powering starter motors and ensuring stable electrical conditions in various vehicle systems and later in energy sources of drive electric motors. Over time, their significance has grown exponentially with the advent of features such as “Start & Stop” systems, micro hybridization, and kinetic energy regeneration. This trend culminated in the emergence of hybrid and electric vehicles, where batteries are the energy source of the electric traction motors. The evolution of storage for vehicles has been driven by the need for larger autonomy, a higher number of cycles, lower self-discharge rates, enhanced performance in extreme temperatures, and greater electrical power extraction capacity. As these technologies have advanced, so have they the methods for their disposal, recovery, and recycling. However, one critical aspect often overlooked is the potential for battery reuse once they reach the end of their useful life. For each battery technology, specific regeneration methods have been developed, aiming to restore the battery to its initial performance state or something very close to it. This focus on regeneration holds significant economic implications, particularly for vehicles where batteries represent a substantial share of the overall cost, such as hybrid and electric vehicles. This paper conducts a comprehensive review of battery technologies employed in vehicles from their inception to the present day. Special attention is given to identifying common failures within these technologies. Additionally, the scientific literature and existing patents addressing regeneration methods are explored, shedding light on the promising avenues for extending the life and performance of automotive batteries.

In the ongoing shift toward electric vehicles (EVs) primarily utilizing lithium-ion battery technology, a significant population of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) remains operational, which are reliant on established NiMH battery systems. Over the last twenty years, these HEVs have generated a substantial number of NiMH batteries that are either inoperable, experiencing performance degradation, or approaching the end of their service life. This situation results in a twofold challenge: (i) a growing volume of environmentally hazardous waste due to the difficulty of NiMH battery reclamation and (ii) escalating maintenance costs for HEV owners necessitated by replacement battery purchases. To overcome this scenario, patent WO2015092107A1, published in 2015, proposed a ‘Method for regenerating NiMH batteries.’ This method claimed the ability to restore NiMH batteries to their original functionality based on a non-intrusive approach. However, a comprehensive review of the relevant scientific literature fails to identify any empirical evidence supporting the efficacy of this regeneration technique. Within this context, this study provides a detailed analysis and evaluation of the regeneration process based on an unsupervised and non-intrusive prototype. The proposed prototype can be used not only to implement and evaluate the previous patent, but also to test any other process or methodology based on controlled charging/discharging periods under certain current conditions. NiMH battery cells from a Toyota Prius were included in this work as a real case study. The experimental results from this prototype demonstrate the reduced potential for battery regeneration using the proposed method. Future contributions should offer a promising solution for mitigating the challenges associated with NiMH battery disposal, maintenance within the HEV domain, and other second-life alternative options.

Some lecturers start their sessions by reviewing or summarizing the main contents covered in the previous session. In general, this review involves the teacher exposing the main concepts and, in some cases, asking about them. This approach, which could be called Check-Reinforce Introduction (CRI), might be seen as having one main drawback; namely, the restricted feedback that lecturers may receive from students due to shyness. Bearing in mind this limitation, we have created what we have called the Classroom Response System CRI (C2RI), which takes advantage of a smartphone-based Classroom Response System (CRS) to obtain more feedback from students during the CRI. We conducted a five-year study on teaching related to technological issues in order to obtain empirical data on whether students consider the use of CRI useful. This is, to our knowledge, the first study involving empirical quantitative data. For this purpose, during the study, we applied the new method (C2RI) to assess whether students prefer C2RI or CRI and whether studentsb’ level of attention, motivation, and performance improved or not. Our findings show that the majority of students consider both methods useful, but the scores are higher in C2RI and they perceive higher level of attention with this method. We have also discovered that their motivation to study between lectures decreased using C2RI, which correlates with a slight decrease in student performance on exams, concluding that this method has to be designed in a way that does not create a false sense of confidence in the students.

Temperature excursions during refrigerated transport strongly affect the quality and shelf life of perishable food, yet reproducing realistic, time-varying cold-chain temperature histories in the laboratory remains challenging. In this study, we present a compact, portable climate chamber driven by Peltier modules and an identification-guided control architecture designed to reproduce real refrigerated-truck temperature histories with high fidelity. Control is implemented as a cascaded regulator: an outer two-degree-of-freedom PID for air-temperature tracking and faster inner PID loops for module-face regulation, enhanced with derivative filtering, anti-windup back-calculation, a Smith predictor, and hysteresis-based bumpless switching to manage dead time and polarity reversals. The system integrates distributed temperature and humidity sensors to provide real-time feedback for precise thermal control, enabling accurate reproduction of cold-chain conditions. Validation comprised two independent 36-day reproductions of field traces and a focused 24-h comparison against traditional control baselines. Over the long trials, the chamber achieved very low long-run errors ($\mathrm{MAE}\cong 0.19 °\mathrm{C}$, $\mathrm{MedAE}\cong 0.10 °\mathrm{C}$, $\mathrm{RMSE}\cong 0.33 °\mathrm{C}$, $R^2=0.9985$). The 24-h test demonstrated that our optimized controller tracked the reference, improving both transient and steady-state behaviour. The system tolerated realistic humidity transients without loss of closed-loop performance. This portable platform functions as a reproducible physical twin for cold-chain experiments and a reliable data source for training predictive shelf-life and digital-twin models to reduce food waste.

In the ongoing shift towards electric vehicles (EVs) primarily utilizing lithium-ion battery technology, a significant population of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) remains operational, reliant on established NiMH battery systems. Over the last twenty years, these HEVs have generated a substantial quantity of NiMH batteries that are either inoperable, experiencing performance degradation, or approaching the end of their service life. This results in a twofold challenge: a growing volume of environmentally hazardous waste due to the difficulty of NiMH battery reclamation, and escalating maintenance costs for HEV owners necessitated by replacement battery purchases. Patent WO2015092107A1, published in 2015, proposed a "Method for regenerating NiMh batteries." This method claims the ability to restore NiMH batteries to their original functionality. However, a comprehensive review of relevant scientific literature fails to identify any empirical evidence supporting the efficacy of the regeneration technique detailed in the patent. Within this context, this paper presents a detailed analysis and evaluation of the feasibility of the aforementioned patented method. To achieve this objective, the authors propose a prototype constructed utilizing NiMH battery cells sourced from a Toyota Prius. The experimental results obtained from this prototype demonstrate the potential for battery regeneration using the proposed method. These findings offer a promising solution for mitigating the challenges associated with NiMH battery disposal and maintenance within the HEV domain.