The mechanism revelation of performance decrease and fast-charging limitation of lithium-ion batteries at low temperatures is indispensable to optimize battery design and develop fast-charging methods. In this article, an electrochemical model-based quantitative analysis method is proposed to uncover the dominant reason for performance decrease and fast-charging limitation of batteries at low temperatures. The highly important dynamic parameters are carefully determined by the experimental data from the checked three-electrode battery and optimized by the genetic algorithm, rather than directly taken from the references. Validation results confirm that the electrochemical model can well reproduce battery behaviors under different conditions and that identified parameters are accurate. The quantitative analysis indicates that the sluggish diffusion in cathode and anode electrodes is the principal reason for battery available capacity loss. Battery available power attenuation is primarily attributed to the increased film resistance of anode and the reduced exchange current density of cathode, and it is substantially independent of the reduced diffusivity. The comparison result from the lithium-plating-prevention charging current reveals that the increased film resistance of the anode is responsible for the predominant limitation of low-temperature fast-charging, despite the most change in the exchange current density of the anode. This quantitative revelation breaks through the traditional understanding from the qualitative analysis that performance decrease and fast-charging limitation of batteries at low temperatures are highly associated with the degree of the change of characteristic parameters.

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have the advantages of high energy/power densities, low self-discharge rate, and long cycle life, and thus are widely used in electric vehicles (EVs). However, at low temperatures, the peak power and available energy of LIBs drop sharply, with a high risk of lithium plating during charging. This poor performance significantly impacts the application of EVs in cold weather and dramatically limits the promotion of EVs in high-latitude regions. This challenge recently attracted much attention, especially investigating the performance decrease for LIBs at low temperatures, and exploring the solutions; however, limited reviews exist on this topic. Here, we thoroughly review the state-of-the-arts about battery performance decrease, modeling, and preheating, aiming to drive effective solutions for addressing the low-temperature challenge of LIBs. We outline the performance limitations of LIBs at low temperatures and quantify the significant changes in (dis)charging performance and resistance of LIBs at low temperatures. The various models considering low-temperature influencing factors are also tabulated and summarized, with the modeling improvement for describing low-temperature performance highlighted. Furthermore, we categorize the existing heating methods, and the metrics such as heating rate, energy consumption, and lifetime impact are highlighted to provide fundamental insights into the heating methods. Finally, the limits of current research on low-temperature LIBs are outlined, and an outlook on future research direction is provided.

Power simulation of lithium ion battery through battery model is of great significance for dynamic response simulation, heat generation calculation and charge-discharge strategy development. The accuracy and applicability of the model become crucial. In order to demonstrate the battery transient characteristics more effectively, a novel identification method for parameters of the 2nd order RC equivalent circuit model was proposed. Based on the derived evolution law of battery transient characteristics under the continuous pulse excitation, four feature points are extracted for parameter identification in each cycle. The proposed method reduced the time cost of identification from 11796.88s to 0.06s while ensuring that the error of voltage doesn't exceed 2.2mV. In order to verify the power profiles applicability of the proposed method, applicability analysis of power profile for different identification methods was carried out including the methods using different amount of data (4N points, 200 points, 6000 points) under unidirectional current pulse excitation (UCPE), bidirectional current pulse excitation (BCPE) and unidirectional voltage pulse excitation (UVPE). It was illustrated that the identification process using data of multiple cycles could significantly reduce errors, including maximum error and average error. What's more, the proposed method under UCPE had the lowest maximum error of 0.420% in voltage simulation and -0.421% in the current simulation of power profiles. Compared with the conventional method (using 200 points of single pulse data for parameter identification), the proposed method can reduce the average voltage error and the maximum error by 62.5% and 11.8% respectively under the DST power profile.