HEL Group (United Kingdom) is a company in Borehamwood, United Kingdom.
“Applying a safety-by-design approach within the development workflow has safety and cost benefits. Broadly speaking, process safety scale-up follows four main stages: Screening for potential hazards Evaluation of the main reactions, including possible unintended side reactions Evaluation of “what if” worst case scenarios and subsequently implementing mitigation and control strategies.”
“Rapid hazard screening of raw materials at the front end of development allows earlier decisions to be made on how to develop the desired reaction and the synthetic route.”
“Stoessel diagrams can help us understand how risky chemical processes are, including desired reactions and secondary reactions (such as decomposition reactions). Stoessel classification identifies 5 possible scenarios, ranked from least dangerous to most dangerous.”
“It depends on what you are trying to learn. If you need to know how a cell fails — onset of self-heating, thermal runaway, pressure rise, gas evolution and propagation — you need adiabatic calorimetry: the BTC-130 for cell components, coin cells and small cells, the BTC-500 for full cells, modules and small packs.”
“Adiabatic calorimetry tracks the sample temperature so that no heat is lost to the surroundings. A self-heating reaction therefore accelerates exactly as it would in a large cell or pack, giving worst-case onset temperature, self-heat rate, adiabatic temperature rise and pressure data.”
“Yes. The BTC-130 and BTC-500 are adiabatic (ARC-type) battery calorimeters: they track the cell temperature so no heat is lost, and measure onset temperature, self-heating rate (dT/dt), critical temperature and adiabatic temperature rise through to thermal runaway.”
“An environmental chamber holds a set temperature, so it carries the cell’s own heat away. Self-heating is damped, onset temperatures look higher than they are and runaway rates are under-estimated — and the cell’s pressure and gas behaviour is not measured at all.”
“The main components of an electrochemical cell – the basic component of a battery – are the anode, the cathode, and the electrolyte. The main sources of concern in electrical batteries are the electrolyte and the cathode.”
“Calorimetry is a fundamental tool to help build better batteries, including thermally stable batteries, higher energy density, shorter charging times, and longer operational times. In the previous section, we described how different components of a battery are susceptible to failures due to thermal hazard.”
“As the use of lithium-ion batteries continues to grow in popularity and importance, both in industry, in transport, and in day-to-day activities, it is important that these battery are safe and reliable. In the months running to this post, an increase number of accidents involving Lithium-ion batteries have been reported in the press.”
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