Requirements for replacing lithium battery cells

The concept of cell replacement in Li-ion battery packs is relatively new, and despite some recent efforts to investigate this concept, the feasibility, in terms of economics and design, of cell replacement has not been well-studied.

It should also be noted that there may be additional requirements for lithium-ion cells and batteries used in portable electronic equipment for a special area such as vehicles, boats, airplanes, or for special purposes such as medical, mining, sea-bed operations.

An alternative strategy would be making the battery pack reconfigurable for individual cell replacement, so that only less healthy cells would be replaced with newer cells, instead of replacing the entire battery pack [ 17 ].

To make a 60 kWh solid-state battery pack, a combination of LiCoO 2 cathode and sulfide electrolytes can require up to 17 kg of Li. We have included NASICON for comparison, as protected NASICON may be used in lithium metal batteries, which can further modify the estimated lithium requirements.

Some studies have been previously conducted to investigate the cell replacement concept. Kampker et al. [ 18] proposed a battery remanufacturing framework and suggested that the optimal depth of disassembly was up to the cell level, based on the reliability characteristic and the architecture of the cells within the battery applications.

While improved safety and energy density are expected for all-solid-state batteries, they demand nearly 2.5 times more lithium than traditional organic electrolyte-based batteries─up to about 17 kg for a 60 kWh based on single-layer cell level estimation.