THT Battery Newsletter March 2018

Offices in ENGLAND, USA, CHINA, INDIA Representation Worldwide

World BatteryBenchmark Safety and Battery Calorimetry Performance Studies

News

THT awarded funding as part of the Government's Faraday Challenge THT in partnership with Imperial College London have been awarded funding from Innovate UK, as part of the Government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund: The Faraday Challenge THT is honoured to have their project selected as part of the Innovation - feasibility studies category. Winners will share £10 million funding to work on innovation projects to design, develop and manufacture batteries for the electrification of vehicles.

THT will be working with Imperial College to produce an Isothermal Control Platform (ICP) for the Precise Regulation of Battery Temperatures using Multiple Zone Control with the aim to further develop this technology into a mainstream product.

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Main Heading March 2018 Newsletter main header

News Battery ARC User Meeting Earlier this year a successful Battery ARC User Meeting was held in China. The meeting hosted at TsingHua University in Beijing is a yearly event which allows users of THT battery calorimeters to meet and share their knowledge.

Presentations were given by THT UK staff and China staff as well as members of Tsinghua University. The meeting had its largest attendance so far with around 80 delegates present from many different regions of China. Delegates came from both academic and industrial groups, and the high attendance reflects the rapid development of China’s cutting-edge battery research.

ARC Spark Generation Unit (SGU) The severity of a thermal runaway and cell decomposition can depend on the presence of a spark. Without a spark, flammable gases may fail to ignite. In a real world failure scenario it is likely that an ignition source would be present.

The SGU uses a spark-plug to create a continuous spark source at a single point. In order to correctly position the spark plug next to the cell vent region, there is a frame supplied with the SGU which can support cylindrical or prismatic format cells.

As well as presentations, hands on demonstrations of THT’s equipment were given by members of the University.

Please contact THT to obtain copies of the presentations given at this event, and we look forward to seeing even more delegates at next meeting.

The SGU is controlled via the ARC software. There are several conditions which can be configured in the test setup window to choose when the SGU spark plug is triggered.

Once triggered, it will fire continuously until the end of the test. The firing conditions for the SGU are as follows: • Specify SGU to fire at the start of test • Specify SGU to fire at a set temperature • Specify SGU to fire when the ARC enters exotherm mode (e.g. a reaction is detected in the cell) The SGU is available for EV and EV+ calorimeters. The EV+ calorimeter allows the test to be filmed so gas ignition may be observed by the VCO camera.

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March 2018 Newsletter

ARC Latest Papers Tsinghua University China have studied adiabatic thermal runaway features for the 4 types of commercial lithium ion batteries using the EV-ARC. DSC was further utilised to analyse the reaction characteristics of the component materials. The peaks of the DSC results matched well with the peaks in the ARC test results. Therefore, the thermal runaway mechanism of the full cell can be revealed by analysing the reaction characteristics of the component materials inside the cell.

Probing the heat sources during thermal runaway process by thermal analysis of different battery chemistries Siqi Zheng, Li Wang, Xuning Feng, Xiangming He. Institute of Nuclear and New Energy Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China Journal of Power Sources 378 (2018) 527–536

MEET Battery Research Center, Germany have examined commercial 18650-type lithium ion cells employing an Al2O3 coating on the anode surface as a safety feature. The influence of low temperature aging on thermal stability using the EV-ARC with HWS (heatwait-search) based experiments conducted on fresh and aged cells was investigated. The exothermic behaviour of the aged cell shows only minor changes in comparison to a fresh cell.

Al2O3 coating on anode surface in lithium ion batteries: Impact on low temperature cycling and safety behavior Alex Friesen, Stephan Hildebrand, Fabian Horsthemke, Markus Borener, Richard Kloepsch, Philip Niehoff, Falko M. Schappacher, Martin Winter MEET Battery Research Center, University of Muenster, Corrensstraße 46, 48149 Münster, Germany Journal of Power Sources 363 (2017) 70 - 77 Exhibitions THT are exhibiting at the following events in 2018 • March 26-29 International Battery Seminar & Exhibit Fort Lauderdale Convention Centre, Florida • April 10-11 Advanced Battery Power Messe Münster, Germany • September 11-13 The Battery Show, North America Suburban Collection Showplace, Novi, MI • October 16-18 AABC Asia - Advanced Automotive Battery Conference Hyatt Regency, Osaka, Japan

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