Design for Thermal Runaway/Battery Fires
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Basics
- Part of Design for X / a subset of Design for Safety etc
- Essentially rather than assume the battery will not catch fire, assume that it will and design accordingly
- Largely Passive Fire Protection systems etc
- GRANTED one can also include the preventative aspects of
- Battery Management System + Battery State of Health Calculation/Logging
- Recordkeeping on Batch Numbers, Recalls and whatnot
- Battery Thermal Management Systems / Battery Temperature Probes
- Design for Inspection / Design for Disassembly
- Finally Design for Firefighting (especially in terms of EV Charging Stations and BESS
Aspects
Containment
- The Flames and Heat Need to be Contained/Delayed
- Largely covered by Firewall / Firebreak materials / knowledge base
Venting of Smoke/Fumes
- The mixture of burning electronics, and the materials in the individual cells makes some NASTY fumes
- For portable/smaller devices not much else may be done short of an intentional vent (akin to how in Automobile Fires , Autogas / CNG tanks are designed to vent a flame upwards in a controlled manner
- Also not entirely disimilar from “blowoff panels” in Non-Russian Tank Ammunition Magazines
- Having some sort of Filtration akin to “Cockcroft's Folly” may be neat (Although there isn’t the risk of radioactivity in this case, just nasties in burnt battery/electronics)
Fire Suppression/Cooling
- Lithium Ion Battery Fires / EV Fires are an emerging type of fire that hasn’t been figured out exactly yey
- The YouTube Channel “StacheDTraining” has several videos on the topic
- A Video by the YouTube Channel “StacheDTraining” Titled “What Firefighting Tools for Extinguishing Electric Vehicle Fires Really Work?” ( ‘’’~6 Minute Watch’’’ )