Upscaling of solid-electrolyte composite intercalation cathodes for energy storage systems

Abstract

We investigate well-Accepted formulations describing charge transport in composite cathodes of batteries. Our upscaling of carefully selected microscopic equations shows three main features: (i) A novel set of six equations equipped with nine effective parameters which systematically couple the microscale to the macroscale. (ii) The coupling of transport and flow equations allows us to account for three scales: pore scale, Darcy scale, and macroscale. (iii) The upscaled equations take phase separation during Li-intercalation into account as well as specific particle configurations. The wide range of applications and interest in energy storage devices makes these results a promising tool to study the influence of the microstructure on current-voltage characteristics and to optimize cathode designs.