KULR Technology Secures Patent for Thermal Runaway Shield, Proven to Minimize Risk of Fires and Explosions in Lithium-Ion Battery Packs
January 07, 2019 at 03:16 pm
Share
KULR Technology Group, Inc. announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has awarded it a patent on its Thermal Runaway Shield (TRS) – a technology designed and successfully tested to reduce the fire, explosion and other risks associated with thermal runaway in lithium-ion battery packs. Lithium-ion batteries are the industry and consumer standard for portable power; billions of individual battery cells exist and billions more are planned for production. But lithium-ion batteries fail, sometimes with catastrophic results. Among the most dangerous types of cell failures are latent manufacturing defects or stress-related failures related to fatigue, damage, over-cycling or rapid charging and discharging. In many cases, when a single cell in a multi-cell pack fails, for any reason, the fire and heat trigger neighboring cells to also fail in a chain reaction known as thermal runaway propagation. The Company’s TRS is a sleeve-like shield that surrounds and separates individual cells in multi-cell packs and contains KULR’s proprietary carbon fiber fabric and a liquid. The unique combination and configuration of the shield passively draws intense heat of cell failures away from nearby cells while dousing the failed area in a cooling and fire-prevention liquid. In tests conducted by NASA, prototypes of the KULR TRS were shown to keep the temperature of neighboring cells well below their failure temperature of 130 Celsius, while a failed cell surpassed 1,000 Celsius KULR’s core technology is a space-used, vertically-aligned carbon fiber material that is lighter, more flexible, and more efficient than traditional thermal management products. As pure carbon, KULR fiber is perfectly heat efficient and because it behaves like a flexible fabric it can fit with just about any power or electronic configuration in extremely demanding spaces with minimal contact pressure. The patent, awarded as #10147921, was originally applied for in July 2016 and awarded December 4, 2018.
KULR Technology Group, Inc. is an energy management platform company. The Company is engaged in developing, manufacturing, and licensing carbon fiber thermal management technologies for batteries and electronic systems. For its aerospace and Department of Defense (DOD) application, the Company's solution targets high-performance applications in direct energy, hypersonic vehicles and satellite communications. For commercial applications, its focus is solution to battery safety and sustainability. This total battery safety solution can be used for electric vehicles, energy storage, battery recycling transportation, cloud computing and fifth generation communication devices. Its heat management products and services are divided into various categories, Lithium-Ion Battery Thermal Runaway Shield (TRS), CellCheck, KULR-Tech Safe Case, Fiber Thermal Interface Material (FTI), Phase Change Material (PCM) Heat Sink, Internal Short Circuit (ISC) Device and CRUX Cathode.