After Explosion - Battery Degradation Analysis using DSC and SEM

Abstract

Thermal management of the battery is essential for effective utilization in various environmental conditions and for long-term usage. Failure of controlling and monitoring of battery over-heat leads to thermal runaway which causes battery explosion. This paper emphasizes the overheating phenomena of lead-acid batteries in stimulated heat situations. Heat is applied to the battery until the battery gets damaged. After the thermal damage to the battery, various characterization methods were performed to analyze the thermal influence on the anode and cathode plates. The characteristics methods are Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). DSC method is used to find the change in glass transition temperature of anode and cathode materials, which can provide the material thermal behavior over different temperatures. Likewise, SEM is used to investigate the structural morphology of anode and cathode plates. The experimental results are indicating the material degradation improves with different temperature range on both the anode and cathode plates. In particular, plate thermal influence varies at different positions which leads to the change of plate conduction. Additionally, thermography heat distribution images are used to identify the heat flow in the battery during the cycle period.