S. Pannala, T. Li, L. Chen, D. Pelletier
SABIC,
United States
Keywords: cell and pack safety, early detection, control action, passive quenching
Summary:
Battery pack safety following an individual cell runaway is an important multidisciplinary topic to address as we pack more energy and power into a small volume and mass. Fluid flow is an important aspect to not only cool the battery under normal operation but can be leveraged to dissipate the heat rapidly in case of thermal runaway. Thermal runaway incidents are extremely rare but can be catastrophic. The runaway can be triggered by local overcharge, thermal or mechanical abuse. In this talk, we will first go into the details of thermal runaway initiation and propagation. Second, solution to quench the thermal runaway from propagating within the cell through a novel and passive detection of incipient thermal runaway temperature via thermoplastics will be introduced; and that is followed by discussion on the coolant release trigger to quench the runaway. In addition, this solution prevents propagation from cell- to-cell and reduce the chance for secondary combustion.