Canadian company reinvents lithium batteries to prevent fire and explosion
Vancouver, BC, Canada, October 20, 2015 – Battery company PBES has commercialized the worlds first energy storage system to significantly reduce fire and explosion risk from high power lithium batteries.
PBES CoolCellTM and Thermal-StopTM thermal runaway protection systems allow batteries that are over charged or over heated to effectively reduce explosion risk and cascading thermal runaway. That is eliminating the tendency for lithium battery fires to spread uncontrolled from a single cell to the rest of the system.
PBES E-Vent™ offers gas extraction from the battery space, allowing any flammable or explosive gases produced by a battery failure to be removed and dispersed safely.
In repeated tests of the PBES system, the protected battery module was overcharged and brought to high temperature. A single lithium cell in a large module was overcharged to the point of failure. Normally this would result in thermal runaway, however with the safety systems employed, the single cell failure was fully contained and thermal runaway was completely suppressed. The cell did not catch fire or experience any form of rapid, uncontrolled disassembly.
The company is continuing its testing protocol and is offering open viewing of upcoming tests to select media, customer and industry observers, November 2015 in Vancouver, Canada. Please contact Grant Brown, Vice President Marketing and Branding, PBES to discuss remote or in person attendance at the tests and to observe thermal mitigation in action.
“These validation tests are significant not only as a milestone for the company but for the lithium battery industry as a whole,” stated PBES CEO Brent Perry. “This is a world first. No other product has been able to contain a cell-based thermal runaway in a lithium battery. Today, we can claim the safest, most reliable and most powerful commercial solution in the world.”
The thermal event was contained at a single cell and did not propagate to other adjacent cells. In fact, all adjacent cells maintained cool temperatures well within operational parameters and all explosive and flammable gasses produced by the event were removed from the area, thus removing fire and explosion risk. Given the nature of the risk of fire and explosion and the amount of energy managed in Mega-Watt scale solutions, the push to create a system that eliminates this issue sets the bar for industrial applications.
About PBES:
PBES provides engineering and strategic design services to the industrial energy storage industry. Comprised of some of the top thinkers in the energy storage field today, PBES applies next generation engineering to industrial, marine and grid energy storage sectors. Located in Trondheim, Norway and Vancouver BC, PBES is ideally suited to support the needs of Industrial OEM customers around the world. Website: ssssspbes.com/no.ssssspbes.com