A Study on the Development of Fire Extinguishing Agent and Extinguishing System for ESS Fire

Abstract

This paper presents a study on the development of a fire extinguishing agent and extinguishing system for an energy storage system (ESS) fire. The fire extinguishing agent designed to extinguish an ESS fire is a highly permeable fire extinguisher that reduces the surface tension and viscosity while bringing about cooling action. This is the main extinguishing effect of this type of wetting agent, which displays the characteristics of fire extinguishing agents used for penetrating the battery cells inside the ESS module. For the fire extinguishing system, a local application system was designed to suppress fire on a rack-by-rack basis. A 360° rotating nozzle was inserted into the rear hall of the ESS module, and general nozzles were installed in the rack to maximize the fire extinguishing effect. The fire extinguishing agent was strongly discharged by virtue of the gas release pressure. Experiments on fire suppression performance with ESS module 1 unit and module 3 units showed that all visible flames were extinguished in 8 s and 9 s, respectively, by the fire extinguishing agent. In addition, based on confirming reignition for 600 s after the fire extinguishing agent was exhausted, it was confirmed that the ESS fire was completely extinguished without reignition in all fire suppression performance experiments.

Evaluation of Initial Fire Extinguishing System for Marine ESS

“…In the field of ESS fire suppression, the development of mathematical and numerical models to predict thermal runaway of lithium-ion batteries for battery packs with thermal runaway safety features has been reviewed as ESSs with multiple interconnected batteries can pose a significant safety issues because thermal runaway can cause a fire to spread [14]. Another study approached the development of dedicated fire extinguishing agents for ESS fires to minimize secondary damage resulting from extinguishing agent discharge due to malfunctions, by employing a localized discharge method at the rack level rather than a system-wide discharge system [15].…”