LITHIUM-ION BATTERY THERMAL RUNAWAY PREVENTION USING WATER SPRAY COOLING

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CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FUTURE STUDIES
The testing that was performed had a high degree of repeatability. However, several of the data streams needed to be manually synchronized after the fact. This resulted in a large post-test effort to index the data streams. An integrated system should be developed to either put all data into a single stream, or somehow provide a common time stamp to all unique data streams. Also, a better method of heating the LIBs should be investigated. Although the aluminum foil protected the hot plate and allowed for a quick reset the aluminum may have affected heat transfer to the LIB from the hot plate.
To further develop the system for advanced cooling of a thermal runaway, the tests outlined in this experiment should be repeated with different batteries at different initial conditions; different form factors (pouch, prismatic, cylindrical, etc), different chemistries (LFP, NMC, etc), and different SOC (30%, 50%, 75%). Multi-cell battery packs should also be assembled and tested. Multi-cell tests could have an additional component where an “initiating cell” is allowed to go into thermal runaway, but direct cooling is applied to protect the neighboring cells. Another consideration to investigate is the electrical effect of flowing water, which is electrically conductive, through a charged battery pack. Does this create a new risk? Would advanced cooling be as effective with a non-conductive fluid cooling medium?
Another area for research would be how to make advanced cooling an automatic process. Can a fire protection system be integrated with a BMS? Given how quickly thermal runaway can occur, what other ways could a stand-alone system monitor battery cells that would allow for early intervention?
With enough data to support early intervention, can a correlation be made between battery capacity and the amount of water that would be required to prevent thermal runaway, or runaway propagation? Certainly, some sort of full-scale test would be warranted to confirm that the results of small-scale tests can be effectively implemented in a commercial-scale application.
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