Second-life Lithium-ion Battery Lifetime Extension through Self-healing Strategies

Objective

The European Green Deal sets an ambitious goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050, with lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) playing a pivotal role in enabling sustainable transportation and renewable energy integration. However, millions of LIBs are prematurely retired from electric vehicles (EVs) despite retaining up to 80% of their designed capacity, leading to substantial environmental and economic challenges. Leveraging emerging self-healing (SH) techniques that utilize intelligent pulse-based interventions, the BLESS project aims to unlock the untapped potential of second-life LIBs while ensuring safety and durability. To achieve this, BLESS will develop an integrated multi-timescale self-healing framework consisting of three core innovations: 1) Advanced multi-timescale state estimation, enabling rapid detection of lithium plating and capacity degradation by combining field-accessible pulse tests with machine learning; 2) Optimized pulse restoration strategies that designs adaptive pulse parameter profiles to respectively suppress lithium plating and recover lost capacity, ensuring safety and durability; 3) Joint optimization for lifetime extension, implementing a multi-objective dual-loop optimization framework to continuously regulate pulse parameters under uncertain operation conditions, enabling long-term safety and durability of second-life batteries. The methodologies will integrate electrochemistry, signal processing, machine learning, and optimization, delivering a validated experimental platform and novel algorithms. Dr. Shengyu Tao, as an MSCA fellow, will receive comprehensive interdisciplinary training at Chalmers University of Technology, combining theoretical modeling, AI-driven diagnostics, and real-world battery experiments. The outputs of this project will provide scalable solutions for second-life LIB utilization, directly contributing to Europe’s sustainability goals while fostering industrial innovation, energy and material security.