Our battery show report in this issue contains stories on various materials engineered to prevent a thermal runaway in a cell in a lithium-ion pack from spreading and cause a major fire (writes Peter Donaldson).
Prevention is better than cure because, rare though they are, thermal runaways in EV lithium-ion batteries contain all four elements of the ‘fire tetrahedron’ – heat, oxygen, fuel and a chemical reaction – making them notoriously hard to extinguish. Putting them out is far from impossible, however. Read more…