Development and Validation of a Pilot Viscosity Monitoring System for Secondary Battery Slurries

In the mixing process of lithium-ion secondary battery electrodes, rheological properties of anode and cathode slurries influence significantly the electrochemical and thermomechanical behaviors of the final electrode and, among others, the viscosity is the most important property. The slurry viscosity varies with shear rate and, therefore, the measurement of viscosity involves both the measurements of (representative) both shear rate and viscosity. In this study, we developed and validated a pilot-scale in-situ/on-line viscosity monitoring system through a pipe flow system, using the energy-dissipation-rate-based flow quantification technique, by determining the effective viscosity and effective shear rate from the information of the pressure drop and flow rate, respectively. The viscosity measurement results were validated through both numerical and experimental methods. The measured viscosity as a function of the effective shear rate had with less than 10.48% errors in comparison with the rheological data, once the optimized correction factor for the slurry was employed. © 2024 The Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers.