Acquiring impedance spectra from diode-coupled primary batteries to determine health and state of charge

The U.S. Army uses BA5590 Lithium Sulfur Dioxide primary batteries for portable electronic systems. There remains a need, however, for technology that can rapidly assess these batteries and estimate their remaining state of health after being used without degrading them to determine if there is remaining useful life for additional missions. This allows the full range of charge to be consumed before the battery is recycled or disposed. Impedance spectroscopy measurements have been shown to be a useful diagnostic tool, but standard methods cannot be applied to the BA5590 batteries because of the up-front electronics. The BA5590 module is diode-coupled and a charge-neutral excitation signal would be half-wave rectified and completely corrupt the results. However, a rapid impedance spectrum measurement technique has been developed that can be used for the BA5590s based on the addition of a small discharge bias load super-imposed on the sinusoidal excitation signal. The feasibility of this approach was initially simulated and then successfully applied to cell strings on four fresh BA5590 modules. The results clearly showed consistent and repeatable impedance spectra with no significant impact on the SOC as a result of the measurement. Details of this measurement technique and discussion of the preliminary results are presented.