Lithium Battery Early Warning Fire Detection
A thermal runaway event may occur at any time throughout a lithium-ion battery’s lifecycle, such as while it's being manufactured, warehoused, tested and even recycled. In addition to thermal runaway suppression and explosion control solutions, Fike offers comprehensive, early warning fire detection systems for each of these environments that may experience a malfunctioning lithium battery.
Common Application Hazards & Solutions
Fike Thermal Imaging
Fike Thermal Imaging closely monitors the temperature of numerous battery modules and detects any abnormalities before they become larger issues. This allows for prompt maintenance or replacement of malfunctioning batteries, ensuring safe and efficient operations.
“For example, in BESS applications, Fike Thermal Imaging cameras are pointed at the top of the exhaust vents. If you have a thermal runaway event, the hot gas will escape the vents, heat up the metal material, and the thermal camera will quickly pick up on that,” said Rick Jeffress, Fike Director of Business Development.
Examples of how these cameras are used in thermal runaway monitoring include:
Identify unusual heat signatures
that indicate the initial stages of a thermal runaway event, allowing for timely intervention before a fire develops.
Pinpoint hot spots
for specific batteries or circuits at risk of overheating, helping operators address issues before they escalate.
Send real-time alerts and notifications
to personnel once a threshold temperature is breached, ensuring a quick response to prevent fires.
Recognize patterns or recurring issues
by analyzing temperature data over time, which offers insights into potential fire risks associated with thermal runaway.
Fike Flame Detectors
While Fike Thermal Imaging is an earlier fire detection method for lithium battery fires, the FM-approved, flexible and cost-effective Fike Flame Detectors may be used to identify:
- Flames venting from a battery module in a warehouse or the casing of a BESS
- Jet fires or sustained flaming following thermal runaway
- Fire propagation between adjacent containers
- External fires threatening a battery module or an adjacent BESS
Fike Flame Detectors operate in all weather and light conditions, and multi-spectrum infrared and UV/IR technologies provide immunity to false alarms. They also use proprietary algorithms that identify characteristics unique to a flame, ensuring high reliability so processes aren’t shut down or suppression systems aren’t activated for a non-hazardous event.
Finally, they are available with optional ONVIF-compatible video cameras, either in HD color or near IR (greyscale) to view invisible flame, and also store onboard video of one minute pre-event and three minutes post-event recordings that can be downloaded and reviewed to determine the cause of the event.
Fike Digital Temperature Sensing Cables
Fike DTS measures temperatures in real time along the length of the fiber optic cable by transmitting pulses of laser light and analyzing the return signal. By applying this technology around battery racks within a BESS or warehouse, the precise location of the overheated battery module is known at a very early stage and allows for a quicker response than many other fire detection methods.
Allows for a variety of alarm criteria on the same cable run and may detect set temperature thresholds, temperature rate of rise or difference to zone average.
Real-time temperature readings are visualized throughout the cable run with SmartVision™ software; also records temperature history, so trends may be monitored and preventative measures may be performed.
Able to withstand industrial environments with dust, dirt, corrosion and temperatures as high as 1382°F – almost 500°F than any other fire detection system without losing monitoring capability. All cables have an expected lifespan of 30 years and are maintenance-free.
Gas Detection
The earliest indicator of thermal runaway is through the use of gas detection (Li-ion Tamer and InfraSensing), as it is installed either on top of battery modules or within the airflow to quickly identify the initial offgas of a shorting battery cell. These detectors are often used in tandem with Fike Blue for BESS applications with the goal of stopping thermal runaway propagation.
To make the intigration of gas detection as seamless as possible, Fike developed a Custom Li-ion Gas Detection Kit that leverages nearly any existing system such as Li-ion Tamer and pre-assembles it to fit any BESS, saving hours of installation time per unit.
