SHENZHEN, China, March 29, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Today, BYD officially announced the launch of the Blade Battery, a development set to mitigate concerns about battery safety in electric vehicles.

At an online launch event themed “The Blade Battery – Unsheathed to Safeguard the World”, Wang Chuanfu, BYD Chairman and President, said that the Blade Battery reflects BYD’s determination to resolve issues in battery safety while also redefining safety standards for the entire industry.

BYD highlighted a video of the Blade Battery successfully passing a nail penetration test, which is seen as the most rigorous way to test the thermal runaway of batteries due to its sheer difficulty. “In terms of battery safety and energy density, BYD’s Blade Battery has obvious advantages,” said Professor Ouyang Minggao, Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Professor at Tsinghua University.

The Blade Battery has been developed by BYD over the past several years. The singular cells are arranged together in an array and then inserted into a battery pack. Due to its optimized battery pack structure, the space utilization of the battery pack is increased by over 50% compared to conventional lithium iron phosphate block batteries.

While undergoing nail penetration tests, the Blade Battery emitted neither smoke nor fire after being penetrated, and its surface temperature only reached 30 to 60°C. Under the same conditions, a ternary lithium battery exceeded 500°C and violently burned, and while a conventional lithium iron phosphate block battery did not openly emit flames or smoke, its surface temperature reached dangerous temperatures of 200 to 400°C. This implies that EVs equipped with the Blade Battery would be far less susceptible to catching fire – even when they are severely damaged.

The Blade Battery also passed other extreme test conditions, such as being crushed, bent, being heated in a furnace to 300°C and overcharged by 260%. None of these resulted in a fire or explosion.

He Long, Vice President of BYD and Chairman of FinDreams Battery Co., Ltd., covered four distinct advantages of the Blade Battery including a high starting temperature for exothermic reactions, slow heat release and low heat generation, as well as its ability to not release oxygen during breakdowns or easily catch fire.

In the past few years, many EV manufacturers have fallen into a competition for ever-greater cruising range. When the range becomes the prime factor to consider, this focus is then transferred to power battery makers, leading to unreasonable pursuits of “energy density” in the battery industry. It is due to this unpractical focus on “energy density” that safety has been sidelined from power battery development. BYD’s Blade Battery aims to bring battery safety back to the forefront, a redirection from the industry’s tenuous focus on this crucial aspect.

“Today, many vehicle brands are in discussion with us about partnerships based on the technology of the Blade Battery,” said He Long. He added that BYD will gladly share and work with global partners to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes for all industry players.

The Han EV, BYD’s flagship sedan model slated for launch this June, will come equipped with the Blade Battery. The new model will lead the brand’s Dynasty Family, boasting a cruising range of 605 kilometers and an acceleration of 0 to 100km/h in just 3.9 seconds.

Imagine having access to a battery, which has the potential to power your phone for five continuous days, or enable an electric vehicle to drive more than 1000km without needing to “refuel.” Monash University researchers are on the brink of commercializing the world’s most efficient lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery, which could outperform current market leaders by more than four times, and power Australia and other global markets well into the future. Dr. Mahdokht Shaibani from Monash University’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering led an international research team that developed an ultra-high capacity Li-S battery that has better performance and less environmental impact than current lithium-ion products.

The researchers have an approved filed patent (PCT/AU 2019/051239) for their manufacturing process, and prototype cells have been successfully fabricated by German R&D partners Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology.

Associate Professor Matthew Hill, Dr. Mahdokht Shaibani and Professor Mainak Majumder. Credit: Monash University

Some of the world’s largest manufacturers of lithium batteries in China and Europe have expressed interest in upscaling production, with further testing to take place in Australia in early 2020.

The study was published in Science Advances today (Saturday, January 4, 2020) — the first research on Li-S batteries to feature in this prestigious international publication.

Professor Mainak Majumder said this development was a breakthrough for Australian industry and could transform the way phones, cars, computers, and solar grids are manufactured in the future.

“Successful fabrication and implementation of Li-S batteries in cars and grids will capture a more significant part of the estimated $213 billion value chain of Australian lithium, and will revolutionize the Australian vehicle market and provide all Australians with a cleaner and more reliable energy market,” Professor Majumder said.

“Our research team has received more than $2.5 million in funding from government and international industry partners to trial this battery technology in cars and grids from this year, which we’re most excited about.”

Using the same materials in standard lithium-ion batteries, researchers reconfigured the design of sulfur cathodes so they could accommodate higher stress loads without a drop in overall capacity or performance.

Inspired by unique bridging architecture first recorded in processing detergent powders in the 1970s, the team engineered a method that created bonds between particles to accommodate stress and deliver a level of stability not seen in any battery to date.

Attractive performance, along with lower manufacturing costs, abundant supply of material, ease of processing and reduced environmental footprint make this new battery design attractive for future real-world applications, according to Associate Professor Matthew Hill.

“This approach not only favors high-performance metrics and long cycle life, but is also simple and extremely low-cost to manufacture, using water-based processes, and can lead to significant reductions in environmentally hazardous waste,” Associate Professor Hill said.

There might be a battery explosion when internal electrical parts short-circuit, when mechanical issues occur after a fall or an accident, or when they is installation error. All of these failures happen when one side of the battery is heated up and cannot lower down the high temperature fast enough, creating a continuous reaction that generates more and more heat. This kind of snowball process is usually termed as thermal runaway.

Introduction

The process can occur in just milliseconds. This has attracted much attention from the press. But it turns out that not all batteries are equally likely to fail. Any energy storage device carries a risk, as demonstrated in the latest moment on 15th March 2017, involving a pair of headphones exploding on a plane. Many batteries come along with a safety risk, and battery manufacturers are supposed to meet safety requirements.

Even though Lithium-ion batteries are safe, there are millions of customers using then so failures are bound to occur. A one-in-200,000 mechanical failure that happened in 2006 caused a recall of close to six million lithium-ion packs (Battery University).
Specialists of the lithium-ion batteries comment that on rare occasion microscopic metal particles may touch with other parts of the battery cell, causing a short circuit with in the cell.

So why do people and businesses still use them?

Lithium-ion batteries are super-efficient. They keep large capacity of energy in a small space and can keep electronic gadgets working for a long time. Li-ion power cells are also ranked highly in technology. The earliest rechargeable lithium-ion batteries were made for Handy-cams 25 years ago, and now there are many battery suppliers around the globe.

But unlike most advanced technologies, they get volatile with time. This is mainly due to the fact that we want higher-capacitydable batteries in small packages at affor prices. The symptoms may be the similar as they explode but a lot of other factors might be contributing to lithium-ion’s explosions.

These include;

Production Flaws

With all these exploding batteries, the first diagnosis is something must be wrong with the ways the battery is manufactured. Many people might think like that, but Samsung Note 7 issue illustrates that pinpointing the key flaw is not very easy. The initial recall involved devices that had batteries made by Samsung, the ones that did not have enough room between the battery’s protective pouch and electrodes. The squeeze tilted the electrodes in some batteries, leading them to short-circuit. But once the devices were recalled, replacing them with safer batteries from another firm had different issues. Many were not wrapped well, while others had ragged edges inside that caused damage to the main separator. That also caused short circuiting, but for entirely different reasons.

User-Supplied Damage

Even if a device is designed well, continuous dropping and subjecting it to long-term wear and tear can cause damage to the volatile energy source. The best way to tell if your battery is damaged is if it looks all swollen—evidence that the chemicals inside the battery are producing too much gas. That swelling also creates its own stress with the battery housing, which could result to a rupture. Unfortunately, a lot of devices today have a sealed-in battery, and taking the device apart to inspect it involves nullifying the warranty. If the external package of any device appears to be pushing apart or feels abnormally hot to the touch, it’s best to be careful and bring it in for inspection.

Battery Design Flow

Most of today’s devices are designed to be as slim, light, and sleek as possible in order to go with the trend. That can cause stress on an otherwise well-built battery, especially a high-capacity cell packed into a tiny body. Pressure from the hardware surrounding the battery can lead to damage to the electrodes and lead to short circuiting. Insufficient venting or thermal management can lead the flammable electrolyte inside the battery to heat up. Once it gets hot, chemical reactions can cause it to heat up even more and spiral out of control. It’s a situation called thermal runaway that often ends in an explosion or fire.

Industry Pressure and Competition

Companies make billions of profits when they save a small amount on each battery. As a result, many lithium-ion battery manufacturers do shortcuts in order to price their cells at affordable prices. The materials may not meet the required quality, causing damage in the already-thin separator. This situation was likely a major cause of the hoverboard fires: The first models on the market were expensive, and their popularity bred knockoffs with cheap prices and even cheaper internals. Crowd funding and low-priced components have democratized the consumer-electronics industry, but savings often come at the expense of safety.

Even though exploding batteries sound scary, they’re actually quite rare. Himax is committed to supply safer lithium batteries to its customers by using LiFePO4 cells in a variety of applications. LiFePO4 is a more stable and safer cathode material.