Contact person
Franz Evegren
Enhetschef
Contact Franz
Thermal runaway in battery cells
Thermal runaway is a stage of rapid self-heating of the battery cell that in the worst case can result in a fire or explosion. Abuse testing of batteries causes thermal runaway and is tested for product development purposes or product approvals in an open or closed reactor.
Purpose
Our unique pressure vessel offers a cost efficient and quick method to evaluate temperatures, pressure, flow, particles, elemental analysis, total hydrocarbons (THC) and gases released by batteries. It allows battery cells and battery assemblies to be safely tested to gather information needed to assess thermal propagation.
If requested, our vessel can be utilized to obtain UL 9540a approval for your product. This method was designed by UL to evaluate the fire characteristics of a battery energy storage system that undergoes thermal runaway. More information about this test standard can be found on UL's website.
Method
The method for determining the total volume of battery gas produced and the composition of those gases. Maximum pressure in the vessel is recorded as well as temperature and voltage for the tested object.
The sample is placed inside the reactor and then abused until it goes into thermal runaway. Typically, a heating pad or nail penetration device is used.
Gas volume
In the closed reactor the maximum pressure and temperature can be used to measure the total volume of gas released by the battery.
For the open reactor a calibrated flow tube with a differential pressure meter and thermocouples are used to calculate the total volume and the mass flow of gas produced by the battery.
Gas composition
The gas samples are analyzed by FID to measure the THC and Gas Chromatography (GC) to analyze O2, CO, CO2, H2, CH4, C2H4, C2H6, C3H6, C3H8.
Particle size distribution
Particle size distribution can be used for both open and closed reactor by differential low-pressure impactor (DLPI) and measure particles in the range of 0.03 to 15 µm.
For the open reactor DLPI is attached after the flow tube and the particles in the flow are caught. For the closed reactor ashes are collected from the reactor after the test and blown through a pipe with a constant flow to simulate a ventilation of a battery. The DLPI is attached to the pipe to analyze the particles.
Elemental analysis
The particles from the DLPI and ashes can be analyzed with X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and Induction coupled plasma for elemental analysis and ion chromatography (IC) can be used to analyze the total fluoride content in particles.
If you have any questions or want more information about the battery abuse tests in a reactor, please contact us by reaching out to our contact person below or fill in the application.
Deliveries
Raw data for the measurements.
A test report presenting the outcomes of the offered tests, including results from the chemical analysis of gas sampling.
Product approval by UL (optional).
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