Development of a Safer Lithium-ion (Li-ion) Battery for Naval Aircraft Applications Through Thermal Management Design

Texas Research Institute Austin, Inc. (TRI/Austin) is developing a lithium-ion battery module that will manage individual cell thermal runaways in two ways. The active management path will be to monitor the internal temperature of the cell and remove the cell from the charging/discharging circuit if anode or cathode temperatures exceed specified temperatures. Removal from the charging/discharging circuit will trigger the flow of forced CO2 around the overheating cell to bring down the cell"s internal temperature and to remove heat that would be conducted to other cells in the vicinity of the overheated cell. The second means of controlling the effects of a single cell thermal runaway will be to physically isolate the cells from one another using fire resistant, low thermal conductive composite materials that have been shown to produce low levels of fire and smoke and very low levels of toxic gases in the event of a fire. These two thermal management approaches will be integrated into a Battery Management Module that will allow use of Lithium-ion batteries in critical manned applications and when taken to the proposed technologies natural conclusion, will extend the life of the battery cells and improve the overall efficacy of Lithium-ion batteries.