Battery Explosion Hazard Calculator for Lithium Battery System Failure Event Scaling and Assessment
Abstract
APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASEEPRI#s Battery Explosion Hazard Calculator (BEHC) is a rudimentary tool that is meant to support and inform the Energy Storage industry using inputs from UL9540 testing and system design. The BEHC has potential to evaluate what a plausible maximum credible event (MCE) failure could be for large-scale battery systems.The BEHC is not meant to replace in-depth, systematic analyses by licensed experts. Instead, the BEHC is an initial assessment of those considerations to inform initial system architecture decisions early in the project life cycle. The BEHC in its current version has limitations and opportunities for improvement.For example, accounting for partial volume deflagration will improve BEHC results. Consideration of productization or modularization is another potential improvement, as these would affect the fire and explosion behavior of energy storage systems.The BEHC relies on vent gas composition information that the user must either input manuallyor select from the existing library. UL 9540A testing data is the industry standard for acquiring cell/module-specific thermal runaway failure and propagation information. However, UL 9540A does not require standardized test environments (temperature, pressure, etc.) and may vary seasonally or by location, reports are not publicly available, and the test results do not account for variation in important cell parameters such as chemistry, form factor, SOC, age, etc. Preliminary studies have suggested that these parameters can change the vent gas composition of a cell in thermal runaway, and therefore affect the deflagration and explosion potential of a system. Publicly available vent gas data is relatively sparse, and needs to be augmented to cover the wide of scenarios for which the BEHC can be used. Ultimately, more and complete testing is needed to better characterize the quantity and composition of flammable gases released. The proposed study will perform extensive cell-level testing to quantify flammable gas composition and its relationship to cell chemistry, age, form factor, SOC, and failure mode. The BEHC can take those results and place them within a context that provides guidance on system design and MCE hazard mitigation efforts. It can be an effective way to translate cell-level testing to modeling system-level explosion hazards.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- May 15, 2023
- Source ID
- N000142312482
Entities
People
- Taylor Kelly
Organizations
- Electric Power Research Institute
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy