Battery Venting Caused By Fast Charging
Authors: Gao Xinlei , Li Yalun , Offer Gregory James , Wang Huizhi 
Published: February 2024

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) experience high risks of failure during unreasonable fast charging. Various degradation mechanisms inside the LIBs such as lithium (Li) plating, solid electrolyte interphase growth and electrolyte dry-out can undermine the electrochemical performance and induce massive gas generation alongside the operation. As a typical failure behaviour, venting occurs when the internal pressure of battery cell exceeds the safety threshold, releasing the gaseous products as well as depressurizing the cell. Recent studies1–3 of thermal runaway (TR) tests after fast charging have found that accumulated plated Li can react with electrolyte at elevated external temperatures, decreasing both self-heating and onset temperatures of TR. Yet, how fast-charging degradation will affect battery venting behaviours remains unclear.

To answer this question, in this study, a series of fast charging experiments under controlled cooling as well as adiabatic TR tests were conducted with 51 Ah LiNi0.6Mn0.2Co0.2O2/graphite prismatic LIBs. The results showed that the prismatic battery underwent severe Li plating with over 30% capacity fade after 10 cycles of 4C charging. In the adiabatic TR tests, the aged batteries after 4C charging exhibited lower self-heating temperature and venting temperature as compared to the fresh batteries, by 51 ℃ and 34.4 ℃ respectively. This can be explained by the additional gas generation from the reaction between plated Li and electrolyte in the fast-charged batteries. Gas analyses of 120 ℃ hot-box tests for the degraded anodes with the electrolyte showed that the vented gas at the early venting stage primarily consisted of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and ethylene. The same charging protocols were then conducted in a natural convection thermal chamber with poor heat dissipation, where the temperature rise was much higher than those under forced convection as expected. Excessive cycling operations with off-limit charge rates (5C and 5.6C) were observed to directly cause battery swelling and venting without TR, and the temperature decreasing rates during rest after each charging process tend to slow down and even remain stable during a certain period of time. This indicates that the exothermic reaction between plated Li and electrolyte can be directly triggered by fast charging if heat removal is not effective enough. The findings provide useful insights into battery venting induced by fast charging, which can shed light on battery safety evaluation for fast charging techniques.

Acknowledgements:This work is supported by the Faraday Institution BESAFE project (FIRG038), the Imperial College President’s PhD Scholarship Scheme (funded by EPSRC), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 52207241), China National Postdoctoral Program for Innovative Talents (grant no. BX20220171), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (grant no. 2022M711760), and Shuimu Tsinghua Scholar Program (grant no. 2021SM130).

References:

Y. Li et al., ACS Appl Mater Interfaces, 11, 46839–46850 (2019).

Y. Li, X. Feng, D. Ren, M. Ouyang, and L. Lu, ECS Meeting Abstracts, MA2019-01, 585 (2019).

Y. Li et al., Energy, 239, 122097 (2022).

Fig. 1 (a) Temperature and voltage changes and (b) enlarged temperature rise rate before 180 ℃ during the adiabatic thermal runaway tests for fresh and fast-charged cells (after the 2nd cycle). Voltage and temperature changes during off-limit fast charging of the 1st cycle under (c) 5C and (d) 5.6C with poor heat dissipation.

Figure 1