How battery calorimeters can help in advancing thermal management and safety of cells and packs

With increasing energy density the thermal management of Li-ion batteries is becoming more and more important, because the thermal runaway can cause an ignition or even explosion of the battery with simultaneous release of toxic gases. In the last five years we have established battery calorimetry as a powerful and versatile electrochemical-thermal characterization technique, which allows both advancements for the thermal management and the safety of batteries. With six adiabatic Accelerating Rate Calorimeters (ARC) of different sizes combined with cyclers the IAM-AWP now operates Europe’s largest battery calorimeter center, which enables the evaluation of thermodynamic, thermal and safety data on material, cell and pack level. Calorimetry is very important as it is fundamental to obtain quantitative data on the thermal behaviour – you need to know how many watts a cell or a pack will generate and dissipate under certain conditions. This information can then be used to define the requirements for cooling and thermal management and adapt them accordingly. It will be shown how sophisticated battery calorimetry combined with thermography for the spatial temperature variation allows finding new and quantitative correlations between different critical thermally and safety related parameters that will help to design safer systems. ... mehrIn addition it will be explained how calorimeters allow studying the thermal runaway propagation in order to develop and qualify suitable countermeasures, such as heat protection barriers, which is currently becoming a very hot topic. The top 3 learning 'take aways' are: • Delegates will get insights into the use of battery calorimetry to provide quantitative thermal and safety data for cell and packs. • Delegates will understand how these data help to improve the thermal management and can give guidelines for safer systems • Delegates will understand that these data combined with better BMS diagnostics provide a powerful tool for the thermal runaway prevention.