This is why it’s a good idea to disassemble lithium-ion battery packs for its cells. In most other cases, just a single cell has failed. Remember, battery packs are made of many cells that are grouped in a specific way. So, if one cell dies, it will bring down the cells that it is immediately attached to.
Battery packs may contain complex control circuitry or a battery management system (BMS), which should also be removed. The disassembly process should avoid accidental shorting of the internal cells. A single cell battery should be stripped down so that all that remains are the external case and the cell itself.
Currently, there are no standards or methodologies for conducting lithium–ion battery disassembly, but IEEE 1625 [ 4 ], “Standard for Rechargeable Batteries for Multi-Cell Mobile Computing Devices,” notes that to conduct disassembly: “… a specialized, highly trained operator is essential.
Following the recommendations given after the safety analysis, as a specific potentially explosive atmosphere (ATEX) 3 zone, the battery pack was manually disassembled. The manual disassembly brought to a disassembly procedure which was decomposed and analysed to identify how to automate the same operations with a robot.
As reported in , even using modules with a limited residual charge, thermal runaway, with gas emission, is possible in case of short circuits that can easily happen during the disassembly. The gas mixture released from LiB can create an ATEX zone around the battery pack.
Consequently, disassembling a lithium–ion battery system can pr esent haz- ards to workers, especially in manual disassembly. Battery packs used in automotive insulated tools to mitigate the risks of electrocution or short-circuits. Such incidents can result in rapid discharge, overheating, and potential thermal runaway. Thermal runaway ].