Heating Lithium-Ion Batteries with Bidirectional Current Pulses

The poor performance of lithium-ion batteries in cold climates is a major concern because they suffer a huge loss in capacity and degradation. Thus, this makes battery-powered vehicles challenging to operate in cold environment. However, thermal rising methods exist and typically use a separate heating element which provides the required thermal energy to the pack to be heated. On the other hand, it is possible to internally heat cold batteries via internal RI² losses by circulating alternating currents (AC). This paper presents a comparison between these two methods. An electrothermal model is used to obtain the simulation results. With this model as based, a low-frequency (0.01 Hz) square current is applied.