In this age of clean and green energy initiatives, the global demand for batteries has been increasing at a significant rate. Batteries possessing greater energy and power are rapidly becoming indispensable, and this demand has accelerated the search for new materials and chemistries to power the next generation. While scientists and researchers enhance the performance of state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries, they’re also looking to the future—towards groundbreaking technologies that will give rise to new kinds of batteries beyond lithium-ion.
The demand for advancements has brought renewed attention to the challenges underlying the quality and safety of batteries that people currently use. An uptick in lithium-ion battery safety incidents has not only increased scrutiny from regulators, it has also pointed out the urgent need for better safety regulations and testing standards. Understanding the science behind batteries will be critical in ensuring their safe performance and usage. In-depth research and testing can provide a holistic understanding into behavior in specific configurations and under relevant environmental conditions, which in turn can mitigate risk and provide a framework for developing reliable and safe batteries.
To facilitate collaboration and awareness, the Underwriters Laboratories’ electrochemical safety research team is hosting a series of Battery Safety Science webinars. These sessions provide a forum for knowledge sharing and contribute to the development of safer energy solutions. Subject matter experts, researchers and battery and energy storage professionals come together to share battery safety research and testing insights and exchange ideas.
Lithium-ion technology has widespread use in consumer products such as phones, laptops and medical devices, and now, highly sophisticated battery systems are transforming electric vehicles, spacecraft and marine transportation, as well as leading to the creation of stationary renewable energy storage systems. Correspondingly, universities, research institutions, government agencies and industries throughout the world are leading efforts to produce batteries both rich in quality and performance and with significantly reduced levels of risk.
The Battery Safety Science webinars enable individuals from a wide variety of organizations and institutions to discuss their findings and expertise. This is an exciting time to share scientific knowledge that advances society’s increased energy needs and makes the world a safer place.
The webinar, hosted by Underwriters Laboratories on August 26, 2020, was presented Dr. Donal Finegan, staff scientist at the NREL Center for Integrated Mobility Sciences. This webinar discussed the application of X-ray techniques to understand failure mechanisms of lithium-ion batteries with an emphasis on how to design experiments to induce and investigate the worst-case thermal runaway scenarios. Insights from high-speed X-ray imaging experiments of Li-ion batteries during thermal runaway were shared as well as practical measures to improve the safety of Li-ion batteries.
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Dr. Finegan’s work focuses on understanding the degradation and failure mechanisms of Li-ion batteries and taking steps to improve the performance and safety of cells and battery systems. He is a frequent user of international synchrotron facilities and pioneered the application of high-speed X-ray imaging for diagnosing battery failure mechanisms during thermal runaway. Dr. Finegan is a visiting lecturer at University College London (UCL), has published more than 50 journal articles, and has received several internationally recognized awards.
The webinar, hosted by Underwriters Laboratories on September 30, 2020, was presented by Professor Bengt-Erik Mellander, Ph.D., from Chalmers University of Technology, and Fredrik Larsson, Ph.D., from Alelion Energy Systems AB.
The presenters’ extensive academic knowledge, field experience and industrial involvement of abuse testing and measurements of flammable and/or toxic gas emissions detailed the risk for fire, explosion and toxicity from Li-ion batteries subjected to off-nominal conditions. Qualitative and quantitative gas component analysis including the detection of the elusive HF (hydrogen fluoride) in the event of external fire, overheating or overcharging of Li-ion batteries were addressed for commercial cells with different chemistries.
The webinar, hosted by Underwriters Laboratories on October 28, 2020, was presented by Y. Shirley Meng, Ph.D., Zable Chair Professor in Energy Technologies and Professor in Materials Science & NanoEngineering at University of California San Diego (UCSD).
While cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has made significant contributions to enabling lithium metal anodes for batteries, its applications in the area of solid-state electrolytes, thick sulfur cathodes are still in its infancy. During the broadcast, Dr. Meng presented new perspectives about how future cryogenic imaging and spectroscopic techniques can accelerate the innovation of novel energy storage materials and architectures.
Dr. Y. Shirley Meng received her Ph.D. in Advance Materials for Micro & Nano Systems from the Singapore-MIT Alliance in 2005, after which she worked as a postdoctoral research fellow and became a research scientist at MIT. Dr. Meng currently holds the Zable Chair Professor in Energy Technologies and professor in Materials Science & NanoEngineering at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). She is the principal investigator of the research group Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC). She is the founding Director of Sustainable Power and Energy Center (SPEC). Dr. Meng received several prestigious awards, including Faraday’s Medal (2020), International Battery Association Battery Research Award (2019), American Chemical Society (ACS) Applied Materials & Interfaces Young Investigator Award (2018), IUMRS-Singapore Young Scientist Research Award (2017), C.W. Tobias Young Investigator Award of the Electrochemical Society (2016), and National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award (2011). Dr. Meng is an elected Fellow of Electrochemical Society (ECS). She is the author and co-author of more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles, two book chapters, and four issued patents.
The webinar, hosted by Underwriters Laboratories on December 4, 2020, was presented by Dr. Daniel Abraham, Senior Materials Scientist with Argonne National Laboratory.
This presentation is an overview of extreme fast charge studies being conducted at Argonne National Laboratory as part of projects funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and a discussion on modes of cell aging during repeated exposure to high currents, with particular focus on electrode behavior.
- Results from cells containing layered oxide cathodes and graphite anodes
- The use of a microprobe reference electrode to monitor the onset of Li-plating conditions
- Methodologies to detect Li-plating and investigate lithium concentration gradients that develop in electrodes
These phenomena cause non-uniform degradation across the electrodes thus making it difficult to predict cell life.
Dr. Abraham has authored more than 140 articles in peer-reviewed journals that span the various frontier areas of lithium battery research. These areas include fast charging, crystal structure transformations in electrode materials, silicon electrode development, solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) formation/dissolution mechanisms, electrode stress evolution, electrode and particle coatings, electrolyte additives, and electrochemical modeling. His work enables the development of materials and components that enhance battery performance, life, and safety.
The webinar, hosted by Underwriters Laboratories on Jan. 20, 2021, was presented by Laurie Florence, UL Corporate Fellow and UL’s Principal Engineer for stationary/motive batteries and energy storage systems.
There has been increasing use of batteries in new applications such as motive and energy storage applications. To keep up with these various applications, there has been a proliferation of safety standards and codes to address the potential hazards associated with these new applications. Nowhere has this been more evident than in the battery energy storage system (BESS) applications.
Underwriters Laboratories has been at the forefront of safety standard development through the publication of UL 9540 product safety standard for ESS, and UL 9540A, which is a large scale fire test for BESS. There has been significant code development in the US and standard development in the IEC as well.
This presentation discussed the development of the standards and experience with testing and certifying these types of products.
Dr. Palani Balaya, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering for the National University of Singapore presented selected examples of commercial type Na-ion cells using polyanion and O3 type cathodes against hard carbon anode and non-flammable glyme-based electrolyte. Further supportive information on SEI formation and its characteristics obtained by Attenuated Total Reflection-Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy and Differential Scanning Calorimetry was also presented.
In recent years, much has been done in simulation to accompany the renewed growth of electric vehicles. Among the main challenges is the inclusion of the electrochemical and thermal behavior of a battery pack in a car crash simulation. Pierre and Iñaki are senior developers of the Electromagnetics (EM) solver LS-DYNA and in their presentation will show the work that has been done towards building a true multiphysics simulation, discuss observations made and the challenges remaining.
Bob Swaim, founder and principal of HowItBroke.com recently delivered insightful data on known failures in electric vehicles (EV) and potential issues impacting firefighters, police, and other first responders. His presentation offered context regarding risks from different battery types by illustrating real-world data from when, where, why, and how often various EVs have caught fire. Case examples highlighted what has and has not been effective for firefighters and the risks created by EV fires and existing standards relating to EV firefighting, as well as support for potential industry improvements.
On April 19, 2019, one male career Fire Captain, one male career Fire Engineer, and two male career Firefighters received serious injuries as a result of cascading thermal runaway within a 2.16 MWh lithium-ion battery energy storage system (ESS) that led to a deflagration event.
During this recent Battery Safety Science webinar installment, Dr. Steve Kerber and Dr. Mark McKinnon provided an overview of the incident, the contributing factors determined through the investigation, and recommendations for the fire service, code officials, utility companies, and manufacturers to prevent similar incidents.
Internal short circuit and thermal runaways are typical battery safety issues where electrochemistry, thermal, and mechanics are strongly coupled. Interdisciplinary endeavors are in pressing need to address these safety issues, enabling wider application and further improvement for lithium-ion batteries. Physics-based multiscale modeling provides us an underlying mechanistic understanding of the nature of battery safety.
During his presentation, Dr. Jun Xu provided an organic overview of the research work on the multiphysics and multiscale modeling of lithium-ion battery issues from the atomic scale to pack level in the past few years under the sponsorship of various agencies and industrial partners. A global picture revealed future outlooks and offered useful design methodologies and tools in battery safety and inspire insightful discussions within the research community and industry network.
The ReCell Center was established by the US Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Office to develop a practical process for the recycling of lithium-ion batteries. But if a recycling process is going to be adopted by industry, it must be economical. And since a main motivation for electric vehicles is environmental, the process must be “green” as well. Therefore, early in their development, ReCell processes are subjected to careful technical and economic analysis, using our publicly available and award-winning EverBatt model, to verify that they will be economical and environmentally friendly. This presentation will describe processes under development and illustrate the use of technical and economic analysis to evaluate them and compare them to alternatives.
Linda Gaines is Chief Scientist of the new ReCell Center for Advanced Battery Recycling and a Transportation Systems Analyst at Argonne National Laboratory. She holds a BA in Chemistry and Physics from Harvard, and a Ph.D. in Physics from Columbia. Her primary interest is problem solving, applied to efficient use of resources. She began her career by writing handbooks of energy and material flows in major industries that enabled later studies of technical and institutional issues involved in recycling discarded tires, packaging, automobiles, and most recently, batteries. She is an editor of the journal Sustainable Materials and Technologies.
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