Abstract:The thermal behavior of Li-ion cells is an important safety issue and has to be known under varying thermal conditions. The main objective of this work is to gain a better understanding of the temperature increase within the cell considering different heat sources under specified working conditions. With respect to the governing physical parameters, the major aim is to find out under which thermal conditions a so called Thermal Runaway occurs. Therefore, a mathematical electrochemical-thermal model based on the Newman model has been extended with a simple combustion model from reaction kinetics including various types of heat sources assumed to be based on an Arrhenius law. This model was realized in COMSOL Multiphysics modeling software. First simulations were performed for a cylindrical 18650 cell with a LiCoO 2 -cathode to calculate the temperature increase under two simple electric load profiles and to compute critical system parameters. It has been found that the critical cell temperature T crit , above which a thermal runaway may occur is approximately 400 K, which is near the starting temperature of the decomposition of the Solid-Electrolyte-Interface in the anode at 393.15 K. Furthermore, it has been found that a thermal runaway can be described in three main stages.
Abstract:In this work, commercial 18650 lithium-ion cells with LiMn 2 O 4 , LiFePO 4 , and Li(Ni 0.33 Mn 0.33 Co 0.33 )O 2 cathodes were exposed to external heating in an accelerating rate calorimeter (es-ARC, Thermal Hazard Technology (THT), Bletchley, UK), to investigate the thermal behavior under abuse conditions. New procedures for measuring the external and internal pressure change of cells were developed. The external pressure was measured utilizing a gas-tight cylinder inside the calorimeter chamber, in order to detect the venting of the cells. For internal pressure measurements, a pressure line connected to a pressure transducer was directly inserted into the cell. During the thermal runaway experiments, three stages (low rate, medium rate, and high rate reactions) were observed. Both the pressure and temperature change indicated different stages of exothermic reactions, which produced gases or/and heat. The onset temperature of the thermal runaway was estimated according to the temperature and pressure changes. Moreover, the different activation energies for the exothermic reactions could be derived from Arrhenius plots.
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