Where have lithium-ion batteries been used?
Lithium-ion batteries can provide more energy with the same amount of weight compared with traditional batteries, such as lead acid batteries and nickel metal hydride batteries. Lithium-ion batteries have been used as energy providers for a variety of devices, including cell phones, laptops, hybrid electric vehicles, airplanes, trains etc.
Lithium-ion batteries, however, have not completely substituted traditional batteries, because they are not perfect. First, their cost is relatively high compared to traditional batteries. Second, careless usage can lead to dramatically shortened life spans. In this blog, we focus only on the second problem. That is, what “tricks” can we do to prolong the life of these expensive lithium-ion batteries or to make them “healthier”?
What affects the health of lithium-ion batteries?
Like there are many factors affecting human beings’ health, battery’s health is related to many factors such as temperature, state of charge (a measure on how much energy left in batteries; 100% means full energy and 0% means empty), charging current, etc. Here we only focus on temperature and state of charge – factors that can be chosen by users in their daily lives.
Tips for healthier lithium-ion batteries
Temperature matters. Some of you might have had similar experience like this: in a frozen night (say, -20 F) you left your apartment with your phone with some energy left, say 30%. Half hour later when you were gonna make a call, you noticed your phone was almost running out of juice. Then you were very confused about what happened to your phones within the magic half hour.
It is probably due to battery’s characteristics. Lithium-ion batteries “hate” very cold temperature (say, below 30F) and very hot temperature (say, above 100F). Under extreme temperature, lithium-ion batteries will be under the high risk of degradation hence have a shortened life. It will even have safety issues, such as thermal runaway under high temperature.
So try to use and charge lithium-ion batteries under moderate temperature. If you really need to use your phone in cold winter night, you can put it into your pocket or a back bag such that the battery of your phone will not be as cold as the ambient temperature.
State of charge (SOC) is another key factor. To have healthier batteries, it is better to charge batteries before they completely run out of juice (0% SOC) and stop charging when they are completely full (100%). It is better to use batteries between 10% SOC and 90% SOC, if it is possible.
Someone would argue that the manufacturers have already done enough research on lithium-ion battery management such that we could use these batteries however we want. We have to realize, however, the manufacturers have to balance the battery life and device performance. For example, Apple would not sacrifice the performance of iPhone too much just for longer battery life spans. Thus, we have to care about our own batteries.
All in all, to prolong lithium-ion battery life spans it is better to use and charge them under moderate temperature and within moderate SOC range. If you want to read more details on how to make your battery healthy, you can read this article from Battery University.
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Blog 1: Make your Lithium-Ion Batteries Healthy