SBIR Phase II: Thermal Runaway Protection and Suppression for Lithium-Ion Batteries

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是解决与锂离子（Li-ion）电池储能技术相关的火灾和爆炸安全隐患。在储能和电动汽车行业增长的推动下，锂离子电池市场预计到2025年将增长到数千亿美元的规模。这些清洁能源技术的未来可行性取决于锂离子电池技术。然而，锂离子电池偶尔会发生灾难性故障，造成严重的热危害，如火灾和爆炸。 该技术有可能成为一种有效、低成本的解决方案，并加速变革性清洁能源技术的采用。SBIR第一阶段项目旨在提高锂离子电池的安全性。在某些情况下，锂离子电池可能会发生故障，导致易燃和有毒气体的放热释放。对于包括能量存储和车辆使用中的大型多单元电池系统在内的应用，热失控的风险可能导致灾难性的火灾、爆炸和有毒气体释放，从而损坏附近的基础设施并造成人员伤亡。热失控对现有的抑制和缓解系统提出了重大挑战，因为尽管抑制了初期火灾，但危险气体释放仍会继续。建议的热失控保护和抑制技术通过利用一系列新颖的物理化学过程来降低热失控事件期间释放的易燃和有毒气体种类的浓度，从而解决了危险的根源。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to address fire and explosion safety hazards associated with lithium ion (Li-ion) battery energy storage technologies. Fueled by growth in the energy storage and electric vehicle industries, the Li-ion battery market is expected to grow to a size of several hundred billion dollars by 2025. Future viability of these clean energy technologies are dependent on Li-ion battery technology. However, Li-ion batteries occasionally catastrophically fail, posing thermal hazards as serious as fires and explosions. The proposed technology has the potential to be an effective, low cost solution and accelerating adoption of transformative clean energy technologies.This SBIR Phase I project proposes to improve the safety of Li-ion bateries. Under certain scenarios, Li-ion batteries can fail, resulting in an exothermic release of flammable and toxic gases. For applications including large multi-cell battery systems in energy storage and vehicle use, the risk of thermal runaway can result in catastrophic fires, explosions and toxic gas release that can damage nearby infrastructure and cause injury or death. Thermal runaway poses significant challenges for available suppression and mitigation systems because the hazardous gas release can continue despite suppression of the incipient fire. The proposed thermal runaway protection and suppression technology addresses the source of the hazards by exploiting a series of novel physio-chemical processes to reduce flammable and toxic gas species concentrations released during a thermal runaway event.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.