Section 1 of 6
Thermal runaway is the problem we’re trying to solve. In order to solve this problem, we need to understand it.
This footage is provided courtesy of UL Research Institutes’ Fire Safety Research Institute. It depicts FSRI’s actual research quantifying the hazards of thermal runaway in lithium-ion battery-powered e-mobility devices.
What do you notice when you observe this experiment? What do you wonder? How can we prevent this from happening?
Welcome to the Science of Thermal Runaway. We’re here to engineer solutions. To do that, first we must learn more about the problems themselves.
Lithium-ion batteries are used for mobile phones, tablets and laptops, and electric bikes, scooters, cars, and hoverboards.
Lithium-ion batteries can store a lot of power in a small space. That energy density is one of the reasons why lithium-ion chemistry is so commonly used for powering portable devices. But it comes with a trade-off: the risk of thermal runaway.
It’s an uncontrollable, self-heating state. In thermal runaway, the battery generates heat very quickly. When the battery’s temperature rises at a rate greater than 20° Celsius (68° Fahrenheit) per minute and the battery’s temperature is above 100° Celsius (212° Fahrenheit), the cell has reached thermal runaway.
As a result of these dangerously high temperatures, thermal runaway can result in:
Battery swelling
Battery venting
Smoke
Fire
In a confined environment, the gases produced during thermal runaway can cause an explosion.