Analysis: Lithium battery smoke is not safer than fire

Smoke and fire are generally considered to be two hidden dangers of lithium battery safety. There is consensus that fires are dangerous, but little or no attention has been paid to the dangers of smoking.

"Lithium batteries also cause great harm to the human body." Aisaku Nagai, consultant of Toyo Systems Co., believes that smoking is not safer than fire. Many batteries emit toxic gases during the process of smoking, which is even more harmful to the human body.

As an important part of the 2015 Senior Industrial Lithium and Electric Vehicle Annual Meeting, on January 7, an overseas special forum jointly organized by the Yano Economic Research Institute and the Senior Industrial Lithium Battery was unveiled at the Guihua Hall of the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center.

In the overseas special session of the annual meeting, large-scale Japanese and Korean companies such as Samsung SDI, LG Chem, SK, Hitachi Chemical and others gathered together.

Well-known overseas research institutions and companies from Yano Economic Research Institute, Japan Nagoya University, Hitachi Chemical Co., Ltd., ESPEC Group, Toyo Systems, LG Chem, Kokam, W-Scope, and Terra Motors gathered together to discuss on the "new pattern, new trend" of international lithium battery with the personage in the field.

In the international special session on the afternoon of January 7, Toyo Systems Co., Ltd. consultant Aisaku Nagai gave a speech on "Injection Gas Composition Analysis in Lithium Battery Safety Testing".

Through the analysis of the gas emitted from the smoking lithium battery, Toyo Systems found that the battery smoked easily to eject cobalt, nickel and other oxide particles, thereby endangering human health.

In the process of testing the battery smoke, the East-West System Company found that different battery materials, because of their different compositions, have different hazards in the smoke generation process, and analyze the amount of mixed gas.

After over-flushing for 15 minutes at a normal temperature of 4.35V and 6A, the lithium cobalt oxide battery was found to emit smoke quickly. In the process of generating gases such as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, a large amount of cobalt-containing oxide was also volatilized.

After the smoke, the lithium cobalt oxide is far less safe than imagined. Toyo System Company can test the dust in the test box by comparing the actual situation test in the 16000L and 46000L cabinets. It is known that there is a large amount of cobalt after the battery smokes. Compound particles such as nickel and fluorine remain in the air.

And when you sample the 16000L reactor you can see that the large particles can be up to 10 microns, and the small particles can be up to 2 microns. The analysis with EDX instrument showed that the large particles were cobalt, and the small ones were cobalt particles with a content of 69mg/m1 when the fluoride smoked. Through time-sharing sampling, it can be known that a large number of cobalt-containing compound particles are suspended in the air, especially particles less than 2 microns are easy to be inhaled into the lung, which is easy to cause harm to human body.

Therefore, AisakuNagai believes that lithium battery smoke is not safer than fire. He suggests that the workshop must keep enough space and pay attention to ventilation to ensure the safety of workers.

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