After electric vehicle batteries have completed their service life, they can be reused in domestic and industrial energy storage devices or recycled by the manufacturer. To make batteries available for a second life, they must be evaluated, that is, those that are suitable for use as spare parts, those that are suitable for use in energy storage devices, and those that will be disposed of must be identified. This assessment process has traditionally been a lengthy and costly process.
Experts from Nissan, Ametek and Element Energy, as well as specialists from the Warwick Manufacturing Group from the academic department of the University of Warwick, have developed a procedure that allows you to quickly assess the suitability of used electric vehicle batteries for use in stationary energy stores.
According to the press release of the project, the participants were able to create an experimental installation using 50 spent Nissan Leaf batteries and develop an accelerated method for evaluating battery cells. Thanks to the new approach, the assessment now takes only 3 minutes instead of three hours, although the process of classifying whole batteries at the module level still needs to be thoroughly tested.
The CEO of Nissan Energy has already appreciated the new technology, noting that the number of batteries whose life ends in electric vehicles will increase to tens of thousands per year by 2025, and not all of them have completely exhausted their resources and require recycling. Therefore, a new and faster technology for evaluating batteries that still retain significant capacity and performance will come in handy in order to extend their life and postpone costly recycling.
References: warwick.ac.uk. Written by: electricvehicle.org