LITHIUM-ION BATTERY THERMAL RUNAWAY PREVENTION USING WATER SPRAY COOLING

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1.4 Scope of Work
To ensure the experimental apparatus was functioning as intended, several “dry runs” and “dress rehearsals” were performed. The dry runs followed the test procedure script, only without batteries. Dress rehearsals added batteries but were intended to find and correct any unexpected side-effects of heating a LIB to failure. Three batteries were used for the dress rehearsals. Another batch of three batteries were tested to failure in “part 1” of the experiment. These batteries were specifically evaluated for leading indicators of failure via video camera, thermal imaging camera, and direct temperature measurement. A final batch of three batteries were tested in an identical method to “part 1”, but with the addition of water cooling. “Part 2” focused on identifying the leading indicator of failure and using that indicator as an initiation point for introducing water spray to see if failure could be prevented.
Successful prevention of thermal runaway would serve as a “proof of concept” that an early- intervention cooling system may be plausible for prevention of thermal runaway, or keeping the extent of a propagating thermal runaway to a manageable scale.
1.5 Organization of the Report
This report is broken up into four chapters. Chapter 1 provides background and context to the journey of creating this experiment. Chapter 2 is the literature review conducted to establish a baseline for the understanding of thermal runaway research and knowledge gaps in the fire service and fire protection industries. Chapter 3 is a detailed report of the experiment design and execution. Data is presented in section 3.5 to validate the proof of concept. Conclusions drawn from Chapters 2 and 3 are presented in the final chapter: Chapter 4. This chapter also discusses opportunities for further research.
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