Battery Explosion Safety Management

Battery tends to be unstable and catches the fire easily when overheating occurs. The common reasons causing overheating are internal/external short circuit, mechanical deformation and impact, unevenly charging and discharging, and exposure to high temperature environment. Therefore, battery thermal management is of paramount importance to battery safety. The effective battery management must work through the whole battery working procedure, and be able to address both up- and down- streams issues using viable techniques, e.g. sophisticate wiring to ensure even electricity distribution during charging and discharging, fast thermal scanning to monitor battery temperature and predict the development of local hotspots, efficient cooling system to control battery temperature and fire suppression system in the case of battery explosion occurs.

The aim of the present work is threefold. Firstly, to investigate the formation and development of local hotspots by scanning the internal and/or external thermal profile of overheated battery cell; secondly, to measure the burning velocity of battery flame and analysis the toxic compounds produced; finally, to scale up the single battery cell performance to a system level and predict the performance of array of cells and large battery package under overheated conditions.