Fire Safety with High Energy Density Batteries

As high energy density battery technology develops to meet the rapidly increasing demands of consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and grid level storage, corresponding battery safety issues need to be understood and risk management strategies must be developed to mitigate these issues. What requirements should a battery meet so that it can power a laptop for an entire day and still provide an adequate level of risk when used during air travel?  How do these requirements change as the size and energy content of the battery changes depending upon the application?  In this paper, battery safety will be discussed in terms of quantifiable properties, including the short circuit potential energy, the total combustion potential energy, the thermal mass, and the maximum heat dissipation rate.  The impact of these properties will be explored through examination of the specific events, such as self-heating, short-circuiting, cell venting, and post vent combustion of the gases, that occur during a thermal runaway and fire scenario in a Li-ion cell of known chemistry.  The results from battery failure tests will be presented.  Using this framework of properties and events, methods to assess and mitigate potential battery failures and fires will be discussed from the perspectives of electrochemistry, heat transfer, and fire science.