Determination of the core temperature of a Li-ion cell during thermal runaway
- Resource Type
- Authors
- M.B. Ahmed; Ankur Jain; Mohammad Parhizi
- Source
- Journal of Power Sources. 370:27-35
- Subject
- Exothermic reaction
Thermal runaway
Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
Chemistry
020209 energy
Energy Engineering and Power Technology
Thermodynamics
02 engineering and technology
Thermal conduction
Temperature measurement
Lithium-ion battery
Ion
Catastrophic failure
Thermocouple
0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering
Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Physical and Theoretical Chemistry
- Language
- ISSN
- 0378-7753
Safety and performance of Li-ion cells is severely affected by thermal runaway where exothermic processes within the cell cause uncontrolled temperature rise, eventually leading to catastrophic failure. Most past experimental papers on thermal runaway only report surface temperature measurement, while the core temperature of the cell remains largely unknown. This paper presents an experimentally validated method based on thermal conduction analysis to determine the core temperature of a Li-ion cell during thermal runaway using surface temperature and chemical kinetics data. Experiments conducted on a thermal test cell show that core temperature computed using this method is in good agreement with independent thermocouple-based measurements in a wide range of experimental conditions. The validated method is used to predict core temperature as a function of time for several previously reported thermal runaway tests. In each case, the predicted peak core temperature is found to be several hundreds of degrees Celsius higher than the measured surface temperature. This shows that surface temperature alone is not sufficient for thermally characterizing the cell during thermal runaway. Besides providing key insights into the fundamental nature of thermal runaway, the ability to determine the core temperature shown here may lead to practical tools for characterizing and mitigating thermal runaway.