New Report Analyzes KULR’s Thermal Management Technologies
The document describes how the company’s solutions can stop fires and explosions in lithium-ion battery packs by preventing cell-to-cell propagation.
Conducted by the Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division (NSWCCD), the Emerging Energy Storage Technologies report also provides insights on the future of safe battery technology.
Image used courtesy of KULR.
The Emerging Energy Storage Technologies Report
The 65-page report was published last October, and presents two separate sections, concerning energy storage technologies, and early failure detection technologies respectively.
In describing these technologies, the document takes into consideration a number of energy storage applications in consumer electronics.
According to the report, conditions like extreme heat, bumping and jostling, short circuit, constant high-demand use, as well as physical damage can damage a single battery cell in a multi-cell pack, causing it to fail.
The ensuing fire and heat can consequently trigger failure in neighboring cells, causing a perilous chain reaction.
In describing how this type of failure can be avoided, the report then mentions KULR’s battery technology.
KULR’s Battery Technology
KULR originally developed its cooling technology together with NASA in order to create solutions able to regulate extreme temperatures of sensitive components in space.
The technology was then adapted by the company to manufacture custom-designed heat sinks and thermal management products for two NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory space missions.
According to the new document, “incorporating a vaporizing heat sink from KULR could lead to significant mass savings and [was] capable of preventing cell-to-cell propagations”
Moreover, the report also explains how the tested battery packs were found to be highly effective at resisting cell-to-cell propagation when a trigger cell was externally heated, as opposed to identical cells with identical configuration but no TRS.
The latter, in fact, “underwent a complete cell-to-cell propagation under the same test conditions.”
Image used courtesy of CPSC/NSWCCD.
Storage Alternatives to Lithium-ion Batteries
Besides examining KULR’s battery technology, the NSWCCD report also described storage alternatives to traditional lithium-ion batteries.
“The overall conclusion from the authors of this report is that lithium-ion batteries are likely to maintain if not increase application in consumer electronics,” the report reads.
“For this reason, the safety of these devices may have to be engineered through secondary technologies.”
In particular, the document mentions solid-state and lithium metal configurations.
Commenting on the news, KULR CEO Michael Mo described the report as “highly significant for two reasons.
“First, it shows that lithium-ion batteries will not be replaced anytime soon, which makes preventing cell-to-cell propagation fires the holy grail of battery safety,” Mo continued. “Second, the results again confirm that our design solution efficiently prevents battery packs from blowing up, which has major implications across various multi-billion-dollar market verticals.”
The NSWCCD report comes after KULR joined a United Nations working group in September to help establish battery shipping safety regulations.
For more information about The Emerging Energy Storage Technologies report, you can follow this link here.
