UCONN Senior Design Job Ticket

UCONN Senior Design Job Ticket

Sponsoring Company: Cadenza Innovation

Project Title: Design of a rack-based Li-Ion Battery Module for Grid Storage Application

Prime Contact: Josh Liposky

This effort is a joint project between Mechanical Engineering (ME), Management and Engineering for Manufacturing (MEM) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) students.

The Engineering Challenge: Cadenza Innovation is a global technology leader in energy density, lowest cost, and safety for large lithium-ion energy storage systems.

Cadenza Innovation’s cell design platform allows multiple individual lithium-ion jelly rolls to be packaged in a Super-Cell that enables cell manufacturers to further reduce the cost of lithium-based storage systems and increase the safety of the system. The combined innovations allows cell manufactures to build the highest density, lowest cost system with their preferred lithium-ion electrode technologies.

Cadenza’s cell design combines the best properties from wound jelly rolls and large prismatic cells and allows for game-changing high energy density at low cost for EV, PHEV and grid markets. Super-cells (figure 1) include multiple Li-ion “jelly rolls” (figure 2) that are assembled into a thermally insulating housing ( figure 3 ). The heat generated within each jelly roll is conducted to the exterior aluminum cell case (figure 1).

The performance of the overall cell is highly dependent on the uniformity of temperature of the jelly rolls within the housing.

While charging algorithms, controls, and power converters are currently available to Cadenza, higher level monitoring and control of individual sub-modules, which are formed of multiple cells, is required. It is thus desired to design a supervisory controller that monitors individual sub-moduless to automatically flag abnoramilities, faults, and failures. Therefore, the supervisory controller will integrate sensing, monitoring, and protection:

·  A sensor network will be leveraged from existing and newly-installed voltage, current, and/or temperature sensors to monitor the health status of sub-modeuls;

·  A digital controller and data acquisition system (FPGA-based or DSP-based) will be implemented to monitor sensor data and react;

·  A set of solid-state relays will be integrated with sub-modules, one each, to provide flexible interconnection/disconnect based on the submodules’ health.

Description of Problem/Project: The objective of this project is to :

Design a prototype cabinet style “rack” which will house multiple Litihium-Ion battery modules (groups of super-cells) and demonstrate the thermal management, mechanical structure and electrical performance of the concept design. The project will also build an electrical system, and test it on emulated fault or abnormal conditions to ensure its robustness to ambient noise, communication and sensor inaccuracies, transient charging/discharging conditions in sub-modules, and ambient temperature.

Figure 1 Prismatic Cells

key technology partners to build Cadenza InFigure 1 Prosmatic Cellsnovation into a global technology leader in energy density, lowest FFFcost, and safety. Cadenza Innovation is licensing its technology to allow immediate access to its hiFFghly simplified design for large lithium-ion energy storage systems.

key technology partners to build Cadenza Innovation into a global technology leader in energy density, lowest ost, and safety. Cadenza Innovation is licensing its technology to allow immediate access to its highl Figure 2 Armature and Cap Assembly y Figure 3 Insulating Housing design for large lithium-ion energy storage systems.

(Jelly Roll)

Expected Activity and Deliverables Include (but not limitied to):

·  Research candidate rack configurations -All.

·  Conduct analyses and trade studies to select the best rack mechanical structure design - All.

·  Structural Analysis and Design and CAD modeling of individual drawer and rack system components– Mechanical Engineering (ME) students.

·  Analysis to demonstrate that the rack design can meet all structural requirements for defined dynamic and thermal loading conditions. (ME Students)

·  Thermal Analysis for heat transfer studies required for cooling system design, within one battery module and for entire rack with multiple battery modules – Mechanical Engineering (ME) students.

·  Electromechanical engineering for battery management system (BMS) interconnects, wiring harnesses and contactor design – suitable for both Electrical (EE) and Mechanical Engineering (ME) students.

·  Electrical system-level integration with sensing, monitoring, and protection – A supervisory controller will be designed for each rack to monitor the modules’ performance through voltage, current, and/or temperature sensors, and remove any malfunctioning rack through solid-state relays. Faults will be emulated (e.g. over-temperature, over-current, under-voltage) to test the monitoring capability through a data acquisition system - Electrical and Computer Engineering (EE, CompE) Students.

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·  Testing electrical systems ideally at Cadenza on a prototype rack, or at UConn if such rack is to become available in Storrs – Electrical Engineering (EE) students.

·  Manufacturing analysis – design solutions and analysis for techniques related to the assembly of the system, such as cell to cell joining techniques, laser welding, assembly of drawer modules, assembly of drawers into rack. Mechanical Engineering (ME) students and Management & Engineering for Manufacturing (MEM) students.

·  Manufacturing and quality systems of assembly process, six sigma style. Management & Engineering for Manufacturing (MEM) students.

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·  Design and Fabrication of a prototype drawer and rack system to demonstrate feasibility. All students

·  Full Bill of Materials and Fabrication Cost analysis.

·  All Electrical schematics and circuit board layouts.

·  Software utilized in the supervisory controller

·  Analytical and test results, CAD models, Materials.

·  Is there a specific software package required for the projects? Y _X__ N ___

Which package (name/version) _Ansys Fluent thermal anaysis__

·  U.S. Citizen/Person (green card) Required? Y____ N _X___

·  Will Export Controlled data be used in project (EAR) Y _____N_X__

·  NDA/IP Agreements required? Y _X__ N __