Description du projet
Vers une amélioration de la qualité et de la sécurité des batteries lithium-ion
Les batteries au lithium-ion sont couramment utilisées pour les appareils électroniques portables, les véhicules électriques et le stockage de l’énergie du réseau électrique. En dépit des progrès réalisés dans ce domaine, le nombre d’incidents et de rappels est en forte hausse. L’utilisation incorrecte des piles peut entraîner une accumulation de chaleur et des réactions thermiques corollaires, provoquant des défaillances et un emballement thermique suivi d’incendies et d’explosions. Le projet LiBTR, financé par l’UE, prévoit de développer et de valider un outil de modélisation de la propagation de l’emballement thermique dans les batteries au lithium-ion. L’outil sera basé sur un modèle 3D appelé LibFOAM, qui étudie le comportement électrique et thermique des batteries au lithium-ion, et sur le solveur de simulation d’incendie du code libre de la dynamique des fluides computationnelle d’OpenFOAM.
Objectif
Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are widely used in many applications, such as the customer electronics, electrifying transport and energy storage systems. However, despite endeavour and progresses, the number of incidents and recalls related to LIBs are far rising. Abuse operations can result in heat accumulation and consequent thermal reactions inducing failure and thermal runaway (TR), followed by fires and explosions. The TR of one single cell in a pack can trigger a reactions chain in adjacent cells. As a result, TR propagation will occur in the battery packs. The TR propagation initializing from single cell companied with the reactions chain can activate the TR of entire LIB packs and surroundings, resulting in catastrophic fire and explosion incidents.
The proposed research aims to develop and validate a predictive tool for TR propagation in LIB packs based on LibFOAM the single cell TR model developed by the host and FireFOAM, the fire simulation solver of open source CFD code OpenFOAM. The following specific research objectives are set towards achieving this goal:
⁃ Calibrate LibFOAM for predicting the onset of TR in a single cell under different failure modes and establish the key influencing parameters;
⁃ Extend LibFOAM by coupling it with FireFOAM to predict the release of gases prior to and fol-lowing TR initiation in the triggering cell as well as the subsequent ignition and combustion of the released gases to obtain the resulting thermal environment within the cell groups;
⁃ Further extend LibFOAM to predict TR propagation in battery modules and packs;
⁃ Validated the extended LibFOAM with experimental data in the literature and data to be generat-ed by the ER’s home institution as well as proprietary data from the UK Health and Safety Exec-utive (HSE) in an ongoing collaborative project; and
⁃ Use the validated LibFOAM to investigate the effects of different mitigation measures to inhibit TR propagation.
Champ scientifique
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
Régime de financement
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinateur
GU2 7XH Guildford
Royaume-Uni