Safety assessment of safety cabinets for the storage and charging of lithium batteries

Status:

ongoing

Aims:

Lithium batteries (LIB) pose a fire hazard in the event of a defect and are classified as dangerous goods under international transportation law. They are also listed as ignition sources in TRGS 510. They should therefore be stored as hazardous substances in safety cabinets. In recent years, various individual solutions for safety storage cabinets for the "fire-protected" storage of LIBs have been launched on the market. The majority of these are non-certified technical designs, as there have been no coordinated Europe-wide specifications and recommendations for the storage of LIBs from authorities and stakeholders. Since 2018, three standardization variants for the testing of safety storage cabinets in Germany have emerged simultaneously. These differ greatly with regard to full consideration of all risks (e.g. explosion, gas release, requirement for tightness or exhaust air system).

The main objective of this project is to develop and describe a detailed test procedure for the qualification of cabinets in the event of internal fires. By defining the minimum test requirements with regard to fire and explosion protection and the dissipation of fire gases, as well as the development of evaluation criteria and their limit values, a safe qualification of safety cabinets for the storage and charging of lithium batteries is to be achieved.

At the same time, the previous standardization proposals are to be tested experimentally and confirmed or improved.

Activities/Methods:

Various manufacturers of safety storage cabinets with a great interest in reliable safety testing and certification provided safety storage cabinets for the fire tests. They will be used to test and compare the test methods of the existing standardization proposals. In real fire tests, the protective effect of the cabinets to prevent propagation, the resulting maximum pressure, the gas quantity and composition (inside the cabinet as well as the gases escaping from the cabinet) and the released particles are to be examined and evaluated. The fire tests will be carried out at both cell and battery level. Furthermore, wipe samples with subsequent metal analysis are to be taken at various points (e.g. pressure relief, in the door gap area, etc.) in order to determine the contamination of the installation area with heavy metals and their compounds.

As a result, test conditions for the valid safety assessment of lithium battery safety cabinets are to be determined and verified.

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