(53b) Comprehensive Review on Hazards Related to Lithium-Ion Batteries Technology

With the recent developments on renewable energies, the capacity for energy storage represents a growing area for improvement. Rechargeable batteries have been recently improved in terms of durability, energy density, size and volume. Lithium-ion batteries represent one of the best examples of improvement of energy storage technologies; these have been widely used in a diverse field of applications, from common electronic devices used by millions of people around the world to electric and hybrid vehicles as alternative for conventional fuel-based transportation. Research on the improvement of the design of Lithium-ion batteries is constantly on-going and new materials are being investigated in order to improve the quality of the batteries in terms of efficiency and charge cycles. However, Lithium-ion batteries represent considerable hazards to customers as demonstrated by a series of significant incidents that have occurred in different battery cells involving overheating, fires and explosions in different devices.

Due to the exposure of these batteries, risks related to thermal runaway phenomena are presented in order to propose different approaches to follow in order to investigate causes, prevention measures and design changes to prevent these types of incidents. Thus, a comprehensive presentation of the current status of the safety research on lithium/ion batteries thermal runaway is presented. An overview of the possible promoters for the thermal event is presented by studying the kinetic characteristics of the phenomena as well as the different possible approaches to study this phenomenon such as molecular simulations to understand mechanisms and proposes related decomposition paths.