Experimental Analysis of Thermal Runaway in 18650 Cylindrical Li-Ion Cells Using an Accelerating Rate Calorimeter

In this work commercial 18650 lithium-ion cells with LiMn2O4, LiFePO4 and Li(Ni0.33Mn0.33Co0.33)O2 cathodes were exposed to external heating in an Accelerating Rate Calorimeter (es-ARC, THT Company) to investigate the thermal behavior under abuse conditions. New procedures for measuring external and internal pressure change of cells were developed. The external pressure was measured utilizing a gas-tight cylinder inside the calorimeter chamber in order to detect venting of the cells. For internal pressure measurements, a pressure line connected to a pressure transducer was directly inserted into the cell. During the thermal runaway experiments, three stages (low rate, medium rate and high rate reaction) have been observed. Both pressure and temperature change indicated different stages of exothermic reactions, which produced gases or/and heat. The onset temperature of thermal runaway was estimated according to temperature and pressure changes. Moreover, the different activation energies for the exothermic reactions could be derived from Arrhenius plots.