Abstract
Failure modes of the valve regulated lead acid battery will not only greatly reduce the service life, but also may start a fire. This paper reviews the relationship between battery fire and failure modes. Four failure modes influenced on the valve regulated lead acid battery were emphatically analyzed: “Sulfation of negative electrode plate”, “corrosion of the positive electrode plate”, “loss of water” and “acid leak”. The direct reasons for battery fire are thermal runaway, short circuit and hydrogen explosion, which were inducing by battery failure. A fire prevention scheme was proposed on the basis of above thesis.
Highlights
Valve-regulated lead-acid (VRLA) battery has been widely used in communication power supply system and UPS power system, owing to the advantage of low price, convenient maintenance, high reliability and so on
The summarized factors for battery failure and runaway including: (1) The increasing battery resistance caused by sulfation of negative electrode plate and the corrosion of positive electrode plate, producing the Joule heat according to the formula (Q=I2Rt); (2) The dehydration decreases the heat capacity of battery, while increasing its heating rate; (3) The corrosion of positive electrode plate will consume water and increase the oxygen channel in separator, releasing extra heat and disrupting the heat balance, which in turn leading to battery thermal runaway
The results identify that battery failures such as “Sulfation of negative electrode plate”, “Corrosion of the positive electrode plate”, “water loss of battery” and “Acid leak of battery” increase the battery resistance as well as the Joule heat
Summary
Valve-regulated lead-acid (VRLA) battery has been widely used in communication power supply system and UPS power system, owing to the advantage of low price, convenient maintenance, high reliability and so on. With the development of smart grids, unattended substation has been the popular trend in recent years, but the battery fire accidents caused by failure modes still occurred sometimes. This means that the accurate analysis of the correlation between battery failure modes and fire is an urgent priority event to ensure the safe operations of substations. Some researchers have studied the relationship between the early failure modes (e.g. irreversible sulfation, corrosion of the positive electrode plate, loss of water and acid leak) and batter fire [1,2,3] Their results show that the risk of thermal runaway and short circuit of faulty batteries is significantly higher than that of new batteries. This paper combines with the three factor of combustion to study the relationship among the common failure modes, thermal runaway and short circuit of VRLA battery, and proposes the fire prevention programs
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