Current strategies to address battery safety concerns mainly involve enhancing the intrinsic safety of batteries and strengthening safety controls with approaches such as early warning systems to alert users before thermal runaway and ensure user safety.
This article aims to answer some common questions of public concern regarding battery safety issues in an easy-to-understand context. The issues addressed include (1) electric vehicle accidents, (2) lithium-ion battery safety, (3) existing safety technology, and (4) solid-state batteries.
An overview of battery safety issues. Battery accidents, disasters, defects, and poor control systems (a) lead to mechanical, thermal abuse and/or electrical abuse (b, c), which can trigger side reactions in battery materials (d).
Although the external physical safety devices, such as pressure release vents and positive temperature coefficient resistors (PTC), battery management systems have been designed to enhance safety in commercial LIBs, safety issues such as battery fires and explosions have not been entirely eliminated.
Finally, it is pointed out that battery is a type of energy storage device (higher energy density, less safety), therefore, there is no absolute battery safety, only relative battery safety. Wenqiang Xu, ... Minggao Ouyang, in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2023
Since undesirable and uncontrollable heat and gas generation from various parasitic reactions are the leading causes of LIB safety accidents, efforts to improve battery safety need to focus on ways to prevent LIBs from generating excessive heat, keeping them working at a suitable voltage range, and improving their cooling rates.