Experimental comparison of Oxygen Consumption Calorimetry and Sensible Enthalpy Rise Approach for determining the heat release rate of large-scale lithium-ion battery fires

Abstract

From a fire safety point of view, the burning behavior of lithium-ion batteries is of high interest. The heat release rate (HRR) is the most important fire parameter to analyze the fire hazards of burning objects, so that an accurate determination of it is crucial. In this paper, two different measurement techniques, the Oxygen Consumption Calorimetry (OCC) and the Sensible Enthalpy Rise Approach (SERA) are simultaneously performed in the same calorimeter to measure the HRR of two different types of lithium-ion batteries. HRR values as well as total energies determined by SERA are higher than measured with OCC: The total energy released is about 10–12 times (SERA) and 6–9.5 times (OCC) the electrical stored energy for both battery types, whereas the timescales of the release differ strongly between the types, resulting in maximum HRRs of 3.4 MW (SERA) and 1.5 MW (OCC) for one module of type A and 0.8 MW (SERA) and 0.6 (OCC) of type B respectively. Furthermore, a sensitive dependency of the HRR measurement with SERA on the position of the wall temperature measurement is observed.