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6.UAP Final Report: Prismatic Cell Cycler

Student: Praveen Subramani, SB Candidate in Course 6-1: Electrical Science & Engineering
Faculty Supervisor: William J. Mitchell, Professor of Architecture and Media Arts & Sciences,
MIT Media Lab/MIT Design Laboratory
Co-supervisor: Raul-David Poblano, Doctoral Candidate, Smart Cities Group, MIT Media Lab

Introduction & Prior Research

The Smart Cities Group at the MIT Media Lab is pioneering the future of Mobility on Demand
systems to revolutionize urban transportation by transforming the way people move around
cities. These systems consist of fleets of lightweight, energy-efficient electric vehicles that are
strategically distributed throughout the city. Similar to the bicycle-sharing systems that are
present in many European cities, users can walk up to any of the electrical charging stations,
swipe a membership card, and pick up a vehicle. They can then drive or ride the vehicle to their
desired destination and drop off the vehicle at a different station. This one-way rental system
eliminates the need for wasteful return trips that are often unnecessary and allows for point-to-
point movement that facilitates access to public transportation networks. These Mobility on
Demand systems create a model for highly sustainable urban mobility by maximizing public
access to a centrally maintained fleet of zero-emission vehicles.

Many challenges exist in designing, developing, and implementing this system, many of them
related to the design of the electrical grid infrastructure and battery packs. One of the essential
features of a vehicle in a shared-use system is the ability to rapidly recharge the battery pack (in
10-15 minutes) to enable quick turnover in vehicle rental and allow for a lower capacity pack
onboard the vehicle itself. Rapidly recharging battery systems require a cell chemistry with
sufficient energy density and low internal resistance to prevent overheating during charging,
electricity sources that can supply large amounts of current, battery pack designs that can handle
these high currents and heat, and high power chargers. Battery cells from A123 Systems, an
MIT-spinoff developing nanophosphate-based lithium ion cells, are commercially available and
can be rapidly recharged. Until very recently, the major cell produced by A123 Systems and
utilized for high power applications was a small, cylindrical cell with a 2.3 Amp-hour capacity
and 8 m! of internal resistance. These cells have been extensively tested and characterized by
A123 Systems and the MIT Electric Vehicle Team (EVT), and battery packs made from the
cylindrical cells have been constructed. However, a new cell known as the HD Prismatic (with a
20 Amp-hr capacity at 3.3V) will be available soon and presents an improved cell configuration
for automotive applications due to its higher energy density and streamlined form factor.

While the HD Prismatic cells are very appealing in terms of their energy density and physical
size, cycle life tests of rapid charging have not yet been conducted to determine the feasibility of
repeated use in automotive applications. The cycle life test is an important characterization of a
rapidly recharging cell which provides information on how many times the cell can be fully
charged and discharged at rapid rates without losing a significant amount of its capacity. For
example, a cell cycling system and high power charger were constructed for the cylindrical cells
and demonstrated a capacity loss of ~10% over 1500 cycles as shown in Figure 1.

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Figure 1: Cell Cycling Results for A123 26650 (Cylindrical Cell)
showing approximately a 10% degradation in cycle life after 1500 cycles.

The purpose of this project was to design and construct a cell cycler and high power charging
system for the HD Prismatic cell. Using a high-current source fixed at approximately 4V, the
cycler charges the 20 amp-hour cell with 80A of current for a full-charge in 15 minutes.

Schematic


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Design Process

Design and construction of the cell cycler involve a variety of design constraints. Since the cell
will be rapidly charged and discharged 1500-2000 times, thermal management is an important
concern. To address this, a polycarbonate enclosure for the cycler with fans mounted on one end
and vents on the other was constructed (see enclosure section). Furthermore, the MOSFET and
power resistor used for the cycler were mounted to aluminum heatsinks with fins to dissipate
excess heat (see thermal management section).

The basic architecture of the cell cycler is to provide two current paths, one for charging of the
cell and the other for draining of the cell. This was done with two contactors, essentially power
relays, to switch control the active current loop. During the charging cycle, the contactor on the
left side is closed and the contactor on the right side is open to block the right side current loop.
During the drain cycle, the left contactor is opened and the right switch closes to create a closed
loop between the cell and the power resistor. All circuit connections in the main current loops
were expected to handle up to a maximum of 100A, so hefty 4-gage wire with copper lugs were
used for the high current connections.

Enclosure

After completing a rough sketch of the design including relative sizing of components, the first
major step of constructing the cell cycler was the fabrication of a durable enclosure. An
enclosure is required primarily for safety in case the cell explodes or overheats, but it also useful
for keeping many of the components together in a contained environment. Polycarbonate was
selected as the material for the enclosure due to its optical transparency, resistance to shatter and
impact, and thermal resistance capabilities. Since polycarbonate is fairly expensive, the enclosure
was designed to house only components that generate significant heat and could potentially
overheat or explode.

The rectangular enclosure was created as a digital CAD model using DS SolidWorks with the
following dimensions:

Height: 6 inches
Width: 15 inches
Length: 18 inches

Each of the six faces was created individually as a part and the design was verified in CAD by
creating an assembly to make sure all parts fit together as intended, as shown in Figure 2. The
enclosure was designed to accommodate active air-cooling in the form of two 120mm square-
mount fans. Thus two circular holes were created on one end and air inlets were created on the
opposing end to allow for consistent, roughly laminar airflow through the enclosure.
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Enclosure Top View Enclosure Bottom View

Enclosure Inlet View Enclosure Lateral View

!"#$%& () The cell-cyclei enclosuie assembly CAB mouel is shown fiom foui peispectives.

Charge Cycle

In order to extend the life of the cell and ensure for realistic simulation, the prismatic cell should
be charged with constant current for as long as possible before leveling off to constant voltage.
Given the high amount of constant current necessary for this (80 amperes), purchasing a
dedicated constant current supply was prohibitively expensive. The only supply that was
available for this project with sufficient current output was a 4V, 250 A supply. However,
charging the cell with 250A would be both very harmful to the cells cycle life and an inaccurate
representation of the rapid charging of vehicular battery packs. Since the current output of the
voltage supply could not be explicitly controlled, a MOSFET controlled with a feedback loop
was utilized to keep the cell in the constant current regime for as long as possible. The MOSFET
acts as a switch, which spends more time in an open state when the current is too low and more
time in the closed state when the current is too high. This feedback loop was implemented using
a Hall effect current sensor, which measures the voltage difference across an electrical conductor
transverse to an electric current in the conductor and the magnetic field perpendicular to the
current. The output from the current sensor was fed into an LM311 voltage comparator, with the
other terminal attached to a variable resistance. The output of the comparator was fed to the gate
of the MOSFET through a passive, first order low-pass RC filter. The variable resistance was
tweaked to ensure that the resulting feedback loop would apply high voltage to the gate when the
current was too low and low voltage to the gate when the current was too high. The RC time
constant of the output filter was designed to make these transitions smooth and ensure stability
for the feedback system, such that the current remained roughly constant. Since the sampling rate
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of the comparator was 200 kHz (or a sampling period of 5 "s), the RC time constant was sized to
be significantly larger than this sampling rate. A 4.7"F capacitor and 270 ! resistor were used
for a time constant of about 1.3 milliseconds:

!
" = RC = 4.7F# 270$ =1.27 ms

A 10 k! pulldown resistor was also placed between the gate and the source of the MOSFET to
pull the gate down to the ground and close the current loop through the cell in the event of
feedback-loop failure.

The cell itself must be managed carefully for use in high-current rapid charging. When high
levels of current are pumped into the Prismatic, the pouch cell can bulge and eventually explode,
so the cell must be held under high pressure. To address the potential of bulging during rapid
charging, the cell was placed in a cell flattener, designed by the EVT. The cell flattener consists
of two metal plates with a thermally insulating layer that are held together with interlocking
screws. To prepare the cell for cycling, the cell is placed in the cell flattener and a large amount
of pressure is applied to the flattener while the screws are tightened to maintain the pressure
lock.

Drain Cycle

The drain cycle was activated through the opening of the charge contactor and the closing of the
drain contactor. The resulting closed-loop path connected the fully charged cell to the drain
resistor, a 250W rated 0.05 ! power resistor. In addition, a 100A fuse was placed in the
discharge current loop for safety. Under ideal circumstances, this closed loop was expected to
generate a current of 66A:

!
I =
"V
R
=
3.3V
0.05#
= 66A

In reality, this current was slightly less due to other resistances in the circuit such as the internal
resistance of the cell and resistances of the connectors. In fact, even minor resistances affect the
current quite significantly. For example, even adding 8 m! of internal resistance for the battery
(the spec for the 26650 cell) resulted in nearly a 10A drop in current:
!
I =
"V
R
=
3.3V
0.05#+0.008#
= 56.9A

Initial measurements of the drain cycle yielded a current of 55-56A, indicating some other minor
resistive losses in the connectors, or perhaps a higher internal resistance of the cell (A123 has not
released internal resistance specifications for the prismatic cell). Using 55.5 A as an approximate
average value for drain current, the discharge time for the cell was calculated as:
!
t
drain
=
cell capacity
drain current
=
20 Amp " hours
55.5Amps
= 0.36 hours = 21.6 min

This drain cycle was timed in conjunction with the ~15 min charge cycle to produce a full
charge/discharge cycle of about 37 minutes. The power dissipated in the resistor is also an
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important concern, because excess power is dissipated as heat, which can cause component
failure if over the rated amounts. The power dissipated in the resistor is given by:

!
P
diss
= I
2
R = (55.5A)
2
" (0.05#) =154W

Since the resistor was rated for 250W with proper heatsinking (discussed in the thermal
management section), this power dissipation was acceptable.

Thermal Management

In addition to the enclosure with active air-cooling, the two primary power components the
MOSFET and the power resistor required additional thermal management since they are
responsible for the primary heat dissipation in the circuit. Thermal circuits can be used to model
the heat dissipation, where heat sources are modeled as current sources, temperatures are
modeled as potentials, and thermal resistances are modeled as resistors, as in Figure 3. The
thermal resistance between the device junction and the case, !
JC
, is present in either scenario, but
the addition of the heatsink substitutes the very large case-to-air resistance with two much
smaller resistances (between the case and the heatsink and the heatsink and air).



Heat Source: MOSFET or Power Resistor [W]
T
J
: Junction Temperature [C]
T
C
: Case Temperature [C]
T
S
: Heatsink Temperature [C]
T
A
: Ambient Temperature [C]

!
JC
:

Junction-to-Case Resistance [C/W]
!
CA
:

Case-to-Air Resistance [C/W]
!
CS
: Case-to-Heatsink Resistance [C/W]
!
SA
: Heatsink-to-Case Resistance [C/W]
Figure 3: Thermal Circuit Models for Power Dissipating Devices With and Without Heatsinks
(Source: http://www.altera.com/support/devices/power/thermal/pow-thermal.html)

The two power dissipating devices were mounted to aluminum heatsinks with fins to increase
surface area using thermally conductive paste. In combination with the active cooling, this
heatsinking provided sufficient thermal management so that these two components could operate
without being damaged by heat.







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Control

The control system was implemented using an Arduino Duemilanove (Figure 4), a single-board
microcontroller interfaced through USB and the Arduino software suite. Using the Arduino
board allows for implementation of high-level programming on a board-mounted microcontroller
with analog and digital processing capabilities. Furthermore, the Arduino board has a built in
voltage regulator which provided a regulated 5V output from the 12V DC power supply. While
12V was the dominant supply voltage for the entire system, (including the fans, the contactors,
and the MOSFET-gate comparator), 5V was needed for certain applications such as the current
sensor and the feedback potentiometer. Thus the Arduino functioned both as a microcontroller
prototyping platform and as a 5V supply for the low voltage components.


!"#$%& *) The Aiuuino Bueminalove Niciocontiollei Piototyping Boaiu

The control system was responsible for three major processes. The first role of the control system
was to receive and process input from a variety of sensors to measure temperature of the
prismatic cell and power components, current through the charge loop, and the cell voltage. This
data was parsed onboard the microcontroller to ensure normal values. If any anomalies were
measured such as a large spike in temperature or charge current, the Arduino immediately cut off
both current paths by closing each loops contactor. This was intended to prevent damage to the
equipment but more importantly to act as a general safety feature so that the system would shut
down without supervision if any problems arose during the cycle testing.

The second responsibility of the control system was to manage switching between the charge and
drain cycles. In order determine when to switch, the battery voltage was measured through an
analog input on the Arduino board. During charging, the charge contactor was closed to create a
closed current loop between the current supply and the prismatic cell. When the cell voltage
reached 3.3V, as measured by the Arduino, the cell was deemed charged and the charge
contactor was opened to block the current path. After a 5 second delay to account for settling of
all transients, the drain contactor was closed to form a closed loop between the battery and the
power resistor, thus initiating the drain cycle. When the cell voltage dips below 2.5V, the cell is
considered drained so the drain contactor is closed to block the current loop and the charge
cycle is initiated after another 5 second delay. Using this methodology, the charge and drain
cycle can be repeated in sequence for a specified number of full cycles.
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The process of opening and closing the contactors both for safety shutoff and for switching
between charging and draining was also an important feature of the control design. Since the
contactors require 12V across their terminals to close, the Arduino digital logic pins with only
5V output are not sufficient to switch the contactors. Thus, an NPN bipolar junction transistor
circuit was created to address this problem. The base of the transistor was wired to the Arduino
digital logic pin through a 1 k! resistor to prevent excess current draw at the base terminal and
the +12V lead of the contactor was hardwired to the 12V rail of the DC power supply. The
emitter of the BJT was wired directly to ground and the collector was wired to the ground lead of
the contactor. Thus, when a 5V digital high was applied from the Arduino digital output, this
supplied sufficient current into the base of the transistor to send the device into the Forward
Active Region, effectively pulling the collector to ground and closing the 12V circuit across the
contactor pins. This strategy is illustrated in Figure 5.


!"#$%& +) To auuiess the uisciepancy between the 12v neeueu to close the contactoi
anu the Sv uigital output of the Aiuuino logic pins, an NPN tiansistoi was useu to close
the 12v loop acioss the contactoi when a base cuiient was supplieu.

The third function of the control system is to measure the charge on the battery itself, which is
the primary factor of interest in gauging the cells cycle life. Since current is equal to the time
rate of change of charge, the charge can be calculated by integrating the current over a known
time interval:
!
I =
dQ
dt
!
!
Q = I dt
t
i
t
f
"

This charge is recorded along with the cycle number so that after extensive cycling, the charge
can be plotted against the cycle number to determine the feasibility of extensively rapid charging
the prismatic cell.

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System Photographs


The enclosure setup showing the three heat-generating primary components (Prismatic
Cell, MOSFET, and Drain Resistor) that were placed within the enclosure with active air-
cooling for safety and thermal management.


Angled view of the test setup looking into the enclosure and showing the active airflow
paths along heat dissipating devices.

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Close-up view of the current source used to rapidly charge the prismatic cell.


Top view of the full setup, showing components within the enclosure as well as the control
and safety systems including the contactors, the control board, the feedback system, and
the fuses.

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Next Steps & Future Improvements

The next major research goal in the continuation of this project is to run the cell cycler for
approximately 1000-1500 cycles and measure the degradation of state of charge as a function of
cycle number. Given the approximately 40 minute full charge/discharge cycle, 1000 cycles will
take approximately 28 days to complete and 1500 cycles will take approximately 42 days to
complete. Prior to running for the full cycle life test, a 2-3 day, actively monitored trial will be
run to ensure that the data collection and safety shutoff systems are running properly.

There is also the potential for additional improvement of the data logging and monitoring
system. Currently, host data is logged on a host computer through the serial input monitor of the
Arduino. However, this requires a dedicated computer physically connected to the Arduino board
during the cycle tests. Since the tests will run for a month or more, it will be useful to have the
Arduino interface with a serial data logging board that writes the measured data into RAM such
as a microSD card, so that a host machine is not required. Furthermore, advanced safety
notifications can be implemented, such as interfacing the Arduino board with a network-enabled
board so that the monitoring system can transmit emergency messages through e-mail or SMS if
any of the temperature, current, or voltage sensors output anomalous values. In any setup with
such high amounts of current and power, safety is of paramount concern, so it will be beneficial
to spend the extra time required to implement improved safety notifications prior to running
extended cycle life tests.

References

}. Kassakian, N. Schlecht, u. veighese. !"#$%#&'() +, !+-(" .'(%/"+$#%). Pientice Ball: New
Yoik, 2uu1.
B.}. Peiieault. 012234!+-(" .'(%/"+$#%) 5(%/6"( 7+/(). Nassachusetts Institute of
Technology, 2u1u.
L. Rougeis, L. 89&#:'; <=9">#$> ?9//("; @;)/(A). NIT Electiic vehicle Team Repoit, 2u1u.


Acknowledgements

Two groups and several individuals were instrumental in the realization of this project. The
funding, workspace, and equipment for this project were provided by the MIT Smart Cities
group and the MIT Electric Vehicle Team (MIT EVT). Many thanks to the project supervisor
and co-supervisor, Professor Bill Mitchell and Raul-David Retro Poblano of the Smart Cities
group, for their guidance and support of the project. Sincere thanks to Shane Colton and Lennon
Rodgers of the EVT for assistance in the design and troubleshooting process and for their
outstanding advice on power electronics system architecture. A special thank you to three
students from the Mechanical Engineering department: Anna Haas for assistance with
mechanical design and modeling of the enclosure, Nick Pennycooke for water jet cutting of the
enclosure components, and James White for assistance with Arduino prototyping.