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The fire hazard resulting from the thermal runaway of lithium-ion batteries constitutes an severe threat for electric vehicles, and discovering an effective and prompt method for suppressing battery fire is still challenging. In this paper, a finite volume model for simulating the process of extinguishing lithium-ion battery fire was established, and the effect of water mist on suppressing battery fire was studied. It was found that the larger the droplet size, the greater the initial spray velocity, or the higher the nozzle height, the worse the fire extinguishing effect. The larger number of nozzles, the greater the spray flow, or the earlier the spray start time, the better the fire extinguishing effect. As the spray duration increased, the suppression effect at the center module gradually increased. When the water mist nozzle faced the center point of the module, the temperature rise was much lower than at other angles, and the fire extinguishing performance was the most effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electric vehicles are a clean energy transportation option recently emerged as an alternative to the conventional engine powered vehicles. These vehicles are using Lithium ion battery as energy storage for their propulsion because of its energy density. Due to the chemical reaction of battery elements and internal resistance, the battery releases heat during charging and discharging. Unless this heat is controlled to be within the battery optimum operating temperature, the battery performance and life will be seriously affected. This paper is dedicated to conduct fundamental studies on the battery cooling. A three dimensional numerical analysis is made using PHOENICS version 2018. Cylindrical type battery cell is used in this study. The study gives insight to thermal response, flow field and temperature profiles in the battery module with air flow direction relative to battery cell orientation and cell arrangement. Temperature variation along the flow, and transverse direction of the battery pack is discussed. With a 5 mm inter cell spacing and symmetric arrangement, maximum cell to cell temperature variation in the axial flow type is observed to be 0.2 °C, while in the radial flow type about 3.5 °C for same arrangement. Quantitative and qualitative results obtained from the numerical test are presented. Furthermore, this work is believed to contribute to the improvement of battery air cooling system design in such a way the associated cost and efficiency is compromised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to suppress leakage current caused in the traditional multi-cells series Li-ion battery pack protection system, a new battery voltage transfer method is presented in this paper, which uses the current generated in the transfer process of one of the batteries to compensate for the leakage of itself and other cells except the top cell. Based on the 0.18 µm Bipolar and CMOS and DMOS technology, this proposed circuit has been integrated into a 7-cells Li-ion battery charge and discharge protection chip successfully. The experimental results of cell balancing confirm that the balancing algorithm can help with the shortage of the voltage transfer circuit. Furthermore, analysis of 20 samples shows that the new method can greatly suppress the battery leakage. Compared with the traditional solution, the voltage transfer circuit proposed in this paper greatly reduces the leakage current, which helps to extend the service life of the battery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effectiveness of suppression of lithium ion battery, LIB, fires with water mist was investigated experimentally using a previously developed bench-scale wind tunnel. The experiments were conducted on lithium ion cell arrays constructed from twelve cylindrical (18,650 form factor), fully charged, lithium cobalt oxide cells, which were densely packed in a rectangular configuration without gaps. An electric heater was employed to initiate thermal runaway in one cell. Failure propagation was then tracked using thermocouples located at the bottom surfaces of the cells. Heat release due to flaming combustion was computed based on the oxygen consumption method. Experiments conducted at 640 l min−1 of air, 320 l min−1 of air, and 186 l min−1 of nitrogen tunnel purge flow were used as reference points. All reference point experiments underwent complete cascading failure. Addition of 1.0 and 1.6 g s−1 of water mist to 320 and 640 l min−1 of air produced agent concentrations of 14.1 and 11.1 wt%, respectively, which are slightly above the concentration of water mist recommended for suppression of traditional fires. Application of water mist at 1.0 and 1.6 g s−1 prevented cascading failure in 40% and 50% of the tests, respectively, and significantly reduced the rate of failure propagation in the other tests. At both water mist delivery rates, flaming combustion associated with burning of battery ejecta was inhibited, reducing the combustion efficiency below 50%. One of the key findings of this study is that suppression of flaming combustion is not sufficient to stop cascading failure. The array must be continually cooled with water mist until the temperature of the cells decreases below a certain threshold, which prevents chemical reactions between battery materials inside the cell casings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers novel insights to the design and implementation of an innovative state-of-charge (SOC) estimator for the lithium-ion (Li-Ion) series battery pack. The most interesting feature of this approach is that it can utilize information from each filtered terminal voltage of the Li-Ion cells connected in series for SOC estimation of the battery pack. Without actual sensing each discharging/charging current (DCC) applied to the Li-Ion cells, it is possible to extract each DCC estimation from the corresponding filtered terminal voltages with an equivalent electrical circuit model (EECM) identification of all Li-Ion cells in the battery pack. There are two advantages to SOC estimation of the battery pack with this approach. First, the proposal can be implemented simply and effectively, reducing the computational steps required for SOC estimation. By reducing computational steps, the proposal is expected to be more cost-effective. Second, the approach guarantees an improved SOC performance, even if the battery pack results in inevitable cell-to-cell variation among Li-Ion cells. Accordingly, there are fewer differences to previously estimated DCCs among Li-Ion cells. Specifically, all values from the estimated DCCs are properly compensated for by simultaneous parameter modification according to each cell's electrochemical characteristics. Experimental results clearly demonstrate that our DCC sensorless SOC estimator provides robust SOC performance for the battery pack. This approach considered an experimental battery pack (12S1P) connected in series using 2.6 Ah LiCoO2 cells produced by Samsung SDI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]