Toward predicting trends in propagating failure and its mitigation for a lithium-ion cell stack

Autor: Loraine Torres-Castro, Joshua Lamb, Randy C. Shurtz, John C. Hewson, Andrew Kurzawski
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: Proposed for presentation at the PRIME 2020. Pacific Rim Meeting of the joint Electrochemical Societies held October 4-9, 2020 in Honolulu, HI..
DOI: 10.2172/1824733
Popis: Thermal runaway of lithium-ion batteries is a risk that is magnified when stacks of lithium-ion cells are used for large scale energy storage. When limits of propagation can be identified so that systems can be designed to prevent large scale cascading failure even if a failure does occur, these systems will be safer. This work addresses the prediction of cell-to-cell failure propagation and the propagation limits in lithium-ion cell stacks to better understand and identify safe designs. A thermal-runaway model is presented based on recent developments in thermochemical source terms. It is noted that propagating failure is characterized by temperatures above which calorimetry data is available. Results show high temperature propagating failure predictions are too rapid unless an intra-particle diffusion limit is included, introducing a Damkohler number limiter into the rate expression. This new model form is evaluated against cell-to-cell failure propagation where the end cell of a stack is forced into thermal runaway through a nail-induced short circuit. Limits of propagation for this configuration are identified in terms of the energy density and in terms of the thermal contact between cells. Results show cell-to-cell propagation predictions are consistent with measurements over a range of cell states of charge and with the introduction of metal plates between cells to add system heat capacity representative of structural members. This consistency extends from scenarios where propagation occurs through scenarios where propagation is prevented. The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the Department of Energy, Office of Electricity's Energy Storage Program, under the direction of Dr. Imre Gyuk. Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-mission laboratory managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, LLC., a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International, Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525. This paper describes objective technical results and analysis. Any subjective views or opinions that might be expressed in the paper do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Energy or the United States Government.
Databáze: OpenAIRE