Thermal runaway and its propagation is a big concern for the application of lithium-ion battery. [1] In order to control the propagation in a battery pack, different types of passive cooling have been used as the heat sink of lithium-ion battery packs, such as phase change materials [2] or metal plates. [3] Aluminum has been used widely as it is a relatively light and common material with high thermal conductivity and specific heat. However, how to optimize the configuration of aluminum heat sinks to prevent thermal runaway propagation is still unclear. Recently, Sandia National laboratories [4] assembled modules with aluminum plates of different thicknesses between pouch cells, and investigated experimentally the effect of plate thickness on thermal runaway propagation in a battery module. In the present study, NREL co-investigated these results from Sandia National Laboratories using numerical simulations. [5] This talk addresses the mechanism of thermal runaway propagation in detail. The dominant parameters to prevent propagation are identified. Moreover, an optimum configuration for the aluminum heat sink is proposed. The study provides further insights into the optimization of aluminum heat sink design for lithium-ion battery packs.

Acknowledgement

This study was supported by Computer Aided Engineering for Batteries (CAEBAT) project of the Vehicle Technologies Office, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy. The research was performed using computational resources sponsored by the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, located at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Reference

[1] T. Reddy, Linden’s Handbook of Batteries, McGraw-Hill Professional (2010).

[2] S.A. Khateeb, M.M. Farid, J.R. Selman, and S. Al-Hallaj, Design and simulation of a lithium-ion battery with a phase change material thermal management system for an electric scooter, Journal of Power Sources. Vol. 128(2), pp: 292-307 (2004)

[3] E. Darcy, Passively Thermal Runaway Propagation Resistant Battery Module that Achieves > 190 Wh/kg, Sustainable Aircraft Symposium. Retrieved from https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20160003490 2017-11-16T22:50:41+00:00Z

[4] J. Lamb, C.J. Orendorff, L.M. Steele, S.W. Spangler, Failure propagation in multi-cell lithium ion batteries, Journal of Power Sources, Vol. 283, PP:517-235, (2015)

[5] G. H. Kim, K. Smith, K. J. Lee, S. Santhanagopalan, and A. Pesaran, Multi-domain modeling of lithium-ion batteries encompassing multi-physics in varied length scales, J Electrochem Soc, 158(8), pp: 955-969 (2011).