Completed: Self-discharge test of Kentli PH5 1.5V Li-ion AA (Part 6)

Looking for the teardown or how well the Kentli PH5 battery performs under load? Click the links to learn more.

It’s finally happened – the self-discharge test of the Kentli PH5 Li-ion AA battery has finally come to an end… and it only took almost 3 years!

 

Kentli PH5 Voltage (Jun 18, 2015 – Apr 29, 2018)

Kentli PH5 State of Charge (Jun 18, 2015 – Apr 29, 2018)

Kentli PH5 self-discharge test statistics

Self-Discharge Rate

I never anticipated this test would run for so long; although the PH5 did not have a manufacturer-specified self-discharge rate, marketing materials suggested that the batteries had a storage life that was “3-5 times longer than Ni-MH batteries”. Wikipedia states that after one year, normal Ni-MH batteries lose about 50% of their capacity, and low-self-discharge (LSD) Ni-MH batteries lose 15-30%.

Correlating this with the data collected from the Texas Instruments bq27621-G1 fuel gauge, the battery lost 40% of its charge within one year, placing it in between the standard and LSD Ni-MH chemistries. Using Excel’s SLOPE() function, the self-discharge rate was calculated to be 0.10108%/day.

Experimental Improvements

There is some error in State of Charge measurement when using the bq27621 fuel gauge. As it uses the Impedance Track algorithm, open-circuit voltage is used to determine a battery’s state of charge upon gauge initialization. This OCV curve is chemistry-specific, with slightly different formulations requiring different chemistry ID codes. The bq27621 has a fixed Chemistry ID of 0x1202 (LiCoO2/LCO cathode, carbon anode), but experimental data revealed a better-matched Chemistry ID of 0x3107, 0x1224 or 0x0380; the first two chemistries pointed towards a LiMnO4/LMO cathode chemistry which I was somewhat skeptical of, but did not test further.

Using another gauge with a different, programmable Chemistry ID could have led to a straighter SoC curve. This wouldn’t be too difficult to reproduce, as the battery voltage can be fed to the gauge in order to recompute the state of charge. Additionally, the bq27621 has a Terminate Voltage of 3.2 volts (the gauge considers this voltage to be the point in which it reads 0% SoC), which is higher than the battery’s protection voltage of 2.4 volts (granted, there is very little charge difference in this area of the discharge curve).

My test setup was not temperature-controlled; I live in a house without air conditioning and room temperatures can vary from 15 to 35 degrees C (59 to 95 degrees F), depending on the season. However, I doubt that this would have had too much impact on discharge rate, and this would better represent real-life scenarios where a constant temperature may not necessarily be guaranteed.

Finally, this test was performed on a new, uncycled battery. I suspect the discharge rate would be significantly higher on an aged battery that was subject to a lot of charge cycles and day-to-day wear.

Conclusion

This was the longest-running experiment I’ve ever conducted on this blog. The Kentli PH5’s self-discharge rate lasts longer than a standard Ni-MH battery, but a LSD (low-self-discharge) Ni-MH battery would still last longer, albeit with a lower terminal voltage. The battery, when new, should be expected to last almost 3 years without a charge (although there won’t be any charge left by then); it will hold about 60% of its capacity after 1 year of storage.

To download a copy of the self-discharge test data, click here.

Self-discharge test of Kentli PH5 1.5V Li-ion AA (Part 5)

It’s amazing – 894 days (and counting) have elapsed since the start of my long-term experiment, documenting the real-world self-discharge behavior of the Kentli 1.5V Li-ion AA battery… and it’s still ongoing! How have things fared so far?

Kentli PH5 Voltage (Jun 18, 2015 – November 28, 2017)

Kentli PH5 State of Charge (Jun 18, 2015 – November 28, 2017)

Surprisingly, even after spending nearly 30 months on the shelf, there is still 12% capacity left. The voltage has dropped from 4.216 to 3.692 volts according to my bq27621 Li-ion fuel gauge; the State of Charge (SoC) has dropped 50% since my last update.

The linear end date prediction is holding pretty steady, having changed slightly to an estimated 0% charge date somewhere in February 2018.

On that note, I’m impressed by how much attention this little battery has received, even years after my initial review. Every day I see a handful of views checking out the teardown and performance metrics, and there seems to be hardly any sign that this will change anytime soon. To everyone who stops by to check out my blog posts: thank you! 🙂

Self-discharge test of Kentli PH5 1.5V Li-ion AA (Part 4)

“It’s been a long time… How have you been?”

It’s been almost a year since I started my discharge test of the Kentli PH5 Li-ion AA battery, and the battery has lost almost 40% of its capacity due to self-discharge.

Kentli PH5 Voltage (Jun 18 2015 – May 29, 2016)

Kentli PH5 State of Charge (Jun 18 2015 – May 29 2016)

The discharge curve has gotten a lot less… linear since the last time I posted a self-discharge update. The battery is down to 62% state-of-charge, and its voltage has dropped down to 3.89 volts. Still, there’s a lot of time left until this battery reaches empty… but when?

I’m no statistician, but doing a linear extrapolation in Excel gives an approximate end date of January 2018, and the SLOPE() function in Excel gives me an average drop of 0.111%/day. Of course, this can easily change over the course of this test, but only time will tell…

Self-discharge test of Kentli PH5 1.5V Li-ion AA (Part 3)

Aw what, it’s October already? So much for having another blog post in September…
But anyway, “more months, more data!™”

Kentli PH5 Voltage (Jun 18 2015 – Oct 1 2015)

Kentli PH5 State of Charge (Jun 18 2015 – Oct 1 2015)

The voltage of the PH5 has dropped down to 4.093 volts as of today (October 1st, 2015), and its State of Charge is now 93%. There’s just enough data to guess the discharge rate of the PH5: with the currently logged data, the PH5 self discharges at approximately 0.103%/day. At this rate, the cell should last years before finally reaching zero. Looks like this will be a very, very long term test…

(At least that would give me more time to procrastinate write blog posts.)

Self-discharge test of Kentli PH5 1.5V Li-ion AA (Part 2)

After my first self-discharge analysis of the Kentli PH5 Li-ion AA battery, I have collected another month’s worth of data.

Kentli PH5 Voltage (Jun 18 – Aug 27 2015)

Kentli PH5 State of Charge (Jun 18 – Aug 27 2015)

The battery’s voltage drop has been surprisingly linear. Although I didn’t get the exact day when the bq27621-G1’s State of Charge readout dropped to 99%, it is quite clear that the state of charge is dropping with a fairly steep curve now. That said, because the battery’s voltage is still far away from the ‘flat region’ of the discharge curve, it is difficult to determine when the battery will discharge itself completely at this time.

Self-discharge test of Kentli PH5 1.5V Li-ion AA (Part 1)

As an extension to my previous performance analysis of Kentli’s PH5 Li-ion AA battery, I fully charged an unused PH5 and left it on my desk to self-discharge. Every now and then, a Texas Instruments bq27621-G1 fuel gauge is hooked up to the Li-ion battery terminals (in the case of the PH5, the recessed ring around the 1.5V terminal) and the bq27621’s default settings are used to measure the voltage and state of charge.

I started this test on June 18th, 2015 and will keep taking occasional measurements until the protection IC in the PH5 shuts down.

Since the 18th, the voltage dropped from 4.216 volts down to 4.192 volts as of July 6, 2015; the bq27621’s State of Charge reading remains at 100% for the time being. The voltage drop has been fairly linear so far, but I expect it to taper off as the battery discharges to the Li-ion cell’s “flat region”, and only after that do I expect the cell’s voltage to decline more rapidly.

PH5 Voltage (Jun 18 – Jul 6 2015)

PH5 State of Charge (Jun 18 – Jul 6 2015)

Performance analysis/review of Kentli PH5 Li-ion 1.5V AA battery

In my previous blog post, I tore down the Kentli PH5 battery – a Li-ion battery that has an internal 1.5-volt regulator that allows for terrific voltage stability… up to a point. In terms of data collection, so far I have collected 55+ runs of data logs (248 MB of text files!) and still do not quite have all the data I want. As for the data that I do have, I will be disseminating them with as much thoroughness as possible.

Updated (May 1, 2018):

The battery’s self-discharge rate experiment has come to its conclusion – click here to read it.

I forgot to add a diagram of my test setup – here’s a Visio diagram of the hardware used to test the battery’s performance… Click here to see the full-sized diagram.

 

Voltage vs. load current

As expected, the voltage output of the PH5 remains quite stable, up until roughly 2.1 amps where the voltage sags noticeably until the regulator goes into overcurrent protection mode.

A maximum load capacity of 2.1 amps seems to be a bit… limiting. That said, I have not done tests on the PH5’s transient load capacity, as it would require more automated control than what I currently have available.

Another issue with having such a flat discharge curve is that any device that performs fuel gauging using voltage alone will report 100% capacity, until it suddenly shuts down. This could be a big problem for digital camera users, as they will have no indication that their batteries are running low, until the device abruptly stops working. If the camera was writing an image to its memory card when the battery died, it could cause the image to be corrupted, or worse, damage the file system on the card!

Voltage vs. state-of-charge

Unless you are running the battery at a high discharge rate, the output voltage will be flat at 1.5 volts before abruptly brickwalling and dropping to zero immediately at the end of discharge. At a high load (in the case of the graph below, at 2 amps), the voltage remains flat until the very end of the discharge cycle (99% depth of discharge for my test run), where it quickly tapers off and drops to zero.

Capacity vs. load

This is the big one, and it took a lot of work to get this data, especially at low loads (48+ hours of continuous logging is just asking for Murphy’s Law to come into play). I used almost 50 discharge runs to create the graph below.

This is where things get… interesting. I was expecting the capacity to peak at low currents then taper off as the load current increases. Instead, I noticed a definite ‘hump’ in capacity around the 250 mA mark (reaching a maximum of 1700 mAh / 2550 mWh), and only after that point did I see the expected downward slope in capacity, reaching 1200 mAh (1800 mWh) at the 2 amp mark.

This data brings forth some very interesting conclusions. The PH5’s capacity is inferior to its Ni-MH counterparts (even the relatively crappy ones), and at higher discharge rates it has similar capacity to that of an alkaline at the same load, albeit with much better voltage stability than the Ni-MH or alkaline chemistries.

Other findings

Although I won’t go into too much detail for the next few points (I haven’t gotten quite enough data to be presentable), there are some other issues with the battery that I think should still be mentioned.

One issue is the amount of heat the battery gives off at high loads. At 2.1 amps, I had to use a fan to blow cool air onto the DC-DC converter just to prevent it from entering its over-temperature shutdown mode. Although the converter itself can tolerate elevated temperatures, the Li-ion cell inside will not; the uneven heating that the cell will encounter could potentially degrade its lifespan in the long run.

Another problem is efficiency. At 1 amp, the DC-DC converter is about 75% efficient, and is only 65% efficient at 2 amps. I have not tested the converter’s efficiency at lower loads yet, but I doubt it will achieve more than 85-90% efficiency.

A potential issue with this battery is self-discharge. The buck converter remains active all the time, unless the converter or the Li-ion protection circuit enters a protective shutdown state. I have not had a chance to fully charge an unmodified battery in order to perform a long-term self-discharge test, but I will create another blog post for that, if/when the time comes. Update (May 3, 2018): See the top of the page for the link to the self-discharge test results.

Conclusion

Overall, I’m on the fence when it comes to this battery. Its innovative design does provide unparalleled voltage stability, but its low capacity even at moderate discharge rates dampens the fun significantly. Additionally, the 2.1 amp discharge limit could prove to be a bottleneck for some high-drain applications; this, coupled with the cell’s tendency to shut down abruptly when the internal cell runs empty could potentially cause file system corruption for digital cameras that have not been designed to handle such sudden power interruptions.

Also, the batteries are very costly. At about $10 per cell, you may want to think twice about replacing all your current disposable and rechargeable batteries with these newfangled Li-ion ones. Don’t forget the charger either, as a special charger is required to make contact with a recessed terminal on the top of the battery.

Overall, this cell is… interesting. Just don’t expect a miracle in a steel can.

Pros:

• Excellent voltage stability, even at high loads
• Li-ion chemistry allows for a very lightweight cell, even with the addition of a DC-DC converter
• High output voltage could allow some devices to run more efficiently

Cons:

• Low capacity – provides a mere 1200 mAh (1800 mWh) @ 2 amps, and up to 1700 mAh (2550 mWh) @ 250 mA (even alkaline batteries can do better than this)
• Abrupt shutdown when the battery is overloaded, overheated, or over-discharged
• Runs hot at high loads (and therefore is fairly inefficient)
• 1.5 MHz converter and unshielded inductor can cause excessive EMI (electromagnetic interference) in sensitive devices
• Expensive! Costs approximately $10/cell
• Requires proprietary charger

Bottom Line: This is a niche product and should not be considered a universal replacement for alkaline or Ni-MH AA batteries.

So, about that Kentli battery…

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about the Kentli PH5 battery, which is a Li-ion cell with an integrated 1.5-volt regulator, wrapped up in an AA-sized package. Although I haven’t written much about its performance yet, that doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing work on it. In fact, I’m sure I have never put so much work into a single blog post before!

The full analysis of the battery’s performance is not fully complete, but I’ll reveal some details of my test setup and what I’m currently working on:

Analysis

I’m doing a much more thorough analysis of this battery than I have done with any other one on this blog. I have created a second bq27541 fuel gauge board, but with the explicit goal of measuring the voltage, current, passed charge (mAh) and temperature of a given DC-DC converter. This way, I can measure the input and output of the DC-DC converter simultaneously, greatly enhancing the data I can collect.

These are the data points/attributes I am currently collecting:

• Battery voltage sag at high load currents
• Battery capacity over different load currents (it’s not constant!)
• DC-DC efficiency, both at different load currents but also over a single discharge cycle
• Temperature rise of the DC-DC converter at different loads, and also over a single discharge cycle
• Changes in battery capacity and internal resistance over many charge cycles

I want to be as thorough as possible with my measurements, mostly because nobody else has done a detailed performance review of this rather unusual battery, but also partially because I want to challenge myself and see how much of a “real engineer” I can be (#JustHobbyistThings). 😛

Teardown of Kentli PH5 1.5 V Li-Ion AA battery

June 17, 2015 – Performance analysis/review HERE!

After having an entire month of dormancy on this blog, I’m finally beginning to cross off the blog posts on my “Pending” list.

Last year, I made a blog post talking about Kentli’s lithium-ion based AA battery that has an internal 1.5 volt regulator. The first order never arrived, and the second one had arrived a few months ago but I never got to actually taking one of the cells apart. That changes today.

Cell overview

The battery itself looks like a regular AA battery, except for the top positive terminal. There’s the familiar ‘nub’ that constitutes the 1.5 volt output, but also has a recessed ring around it that provides a direct connection to the Li-ion cell’s positive connection for charging.

 

Label of cell

Ditto, with cameo appearance of MAX3232 to prevent the battery from rolling off my desk…

Top of battery with 1.5 and Li-ion cell terminals

After peeling the label, we are met with a plain steel case, save for the end cap that appears to be laser spot-welded. Wanting to take apart the cell with minimal risk of shorting something out inside, I used a small pipe cutter to gently break apart the welded seam. Two revolutions and a satisfying pop sound later, the battery’s guts are revealed.

Label mostly removed – note seam on top right

Pop goes the weasel, er, battery

Battery internals

Kentli branding on flex PCB

Label of Li-ion polymer cell

Flex PCB soldered to end cap circuitry

The other, less interesting end.

The PCB that holds the 1.5 volt regulator is inside the end cap, with the rest made up of the Li-ion cell itself. Curiously enough, the cell inside is labeled “PE13430 14F16 2.66wh” which is interesting in more than one way. First of all, the rated energy content of the cell is less than what’s on the outside label (2.66 watt-hours versus 2.8), and the cell inside is actually a Li-ion polymer (sometimes called a “Li-Po” cell) type; I was expecting a standard cylindrical cell inside. Unfortunately, my Google-fu was unable to pull up any data on the cell. I might attempt to do a chemistry identification cycle on the cell and see if TI’s battery database can bring something up.

Battery circuitry

Close-up of end cap circuitry

Ditto, with XM5232 markings visible. Lens flare abound!

The end cap’s PCB uses a Xysemi XM5232 2.5 A, 1.5 MHz synchronous buck converter to provide the 1.5 volt output. According to the datasheet, it is a fully integrated converter with all the power semiconductor components residing on the chip itself. The converter is rated for 2.5-5.5 volt operation, well within the range of a Li-ion cell. Additionally, it has a rated Iq (quiescent/no-load current) of only 20 microamps. The buck converter’s 2.2 microhenry inductor is magnetically unshielded which may cause some increased EMI (electromagnetic interference) emissions, but I don’t have the equipment to test this.

Protection circuit with XB6366A IC markings visible

I was looking around for the battery’s protection circuit, and found it on the flex PCB that surrounds the Li-ion cell. It uses a Xysemi XB6366A protection circuit which, like the buck converter, is a fully-integrated device; there are no external protection MOSFETs for disconnecting the cell from the rest of the circuit.

Performance analysis

December 14, 2015 – After extensive and detailed analysis (148 MB of text files!), I’ve analyzed the battery’s voltage and output capacity, which can be viewed HERE (lots of pretty graphs; check it out!).

The data doesn’t stop there. It took almost three years to track the cell’s self-discharge, but the data is finally in. The final report is available here, but previous installments are available here (Part 1), here (Part 2), here (Part 3), here (Part 4) and here (Part 5).

Ramble: 1.5-volt lithium polymer AA battery? What sorcery is this?

Been a while since I’ve posted anything on here, but I decided to share my thoughts on a peculiar AA battery.

This AA battery is the Kentli lithium-polymer AA cell. It has a built-in 1.5 volt regulator that converts the typical 3.7 volts down to 1.5 volts (open-circuit at least). I bought a 4-pack of these cells from AliExpress back in October, but have yet to receive them. Even though I haven’t gotten them, there is some things that I’ve taken note of.

Current/voltage output

A graph promoting the battery discharge curve of the Kentli cell is shown below, taken from a sales page on AliExpress (rehosted on this blog to prevent image bandwidth-hogging):

The interesting thing I found out was the green dashed line. This is supposed to represent the output voltage when used in a wireless microphone. However, the graph itself provides no meaningful data because no current loads are specified at all. In an attempt to get some sort of information from the graph, a Google search for a spec sheet for a typical microphone gives a discharge current of 125 mA. But a 0.3 volt drop at 125 mA? I dunno, this doesn’t seem right.

Safety

From a safety point of view, I’m not sure about how much temperature would rise in the cell from high current draw and whether overheating could occur in use, and if any typical Li-Ion protection circuitry is used (voltage and discharge protection). Given how this is made by some relatively unknown Chinese company, who knows.

I’m not saying anything definite until I see these cells and have a chance to get my paws on them for testing and disassembly. Until then, we’ll just have to wait.