Analysis of Discharge Characteristics and Fire Risk of Mobile Phone Batteries according to the Concentration of Salt Water

Abstract

The process of discharging batteries using salt water, when used for the disposal of a lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, is likely to cause a fire. However, there is a dearth of studies in the literature on the risk of fire while discharging mobile phone batteries in salt water. In order to investigate the possibility of fire by elucidating the discharge characteristics and the generation of heat, we conducted experiments by varying the concentration of the salt water, number of overlapping batteries, and type of the mobile phone batteries used as experimental specimen. The discharging voltage and the temperature of the batteries were measured, and the fire risk was predicted by analyzing the data. The results of the experiment showed that the higher the salt water concentration, the greater the discharge value of the mobile phone battery and the higher the exothermic temperature. Moreover, the exothermic temperatures of the overlapping batteries were higher than that of the single battery submerged in salt water. The highest exothermic temperature points of the battery occurred at the positive and negative poles.