Lithium-Ion Battery Hazards In Electric Vehicle + Manufacturing Environments

Lithium-ion batteries provide unique hazards that have not been present in the automotive and manufacturing environments before. Under a variety of scenarios (e.g., short circuit), lithium-ion batteries can undergo thermal runaway where the stored chemical energy is converted to thermal energy.

When large amounts of batteries are grouped (e.g., in a vehicle battery pack or rack storage), large amounts of energy and flammable gases can be released. This causes fire and explosion concerns but also toxic gas exposure to employees and first responders. As the number of deployments increases, the industry has also been observing more field failures resulting in fires and explosions.

Jensen Hughes has over three decades of experience understanding and mitigating lithium-ion battery failures and their hazards. This presentation will inform the audience about the unique fire safety challenges with lithium-ion battery storage and handling in a manufacturing environment. In addition, performance-based design methods will be presented for fire, smoke, battery gas, and egress modeling to assure that building and fire code requirements can be met.