Combustion characteristics of primary lithium battery at two altitudes

To increase the safety margin, the fire hazard of lithium battery should be considered. In this research, the experimental results of lithium battery fires were provided, expecting to offer guidance to facilitate the safe handling of battery packs and cells under normal and high-altitude conditions. Single and bundles of primary lithium battery experiments were performed to study the fire behaviors of primary lithium batteries. The same configured calorimeter was built in a sea-level city Hefei (100.8 kPa/24 m) and a high-altitude city Lhasa (64.3 kPa/3650 m), respectively, to investigate the effect of altitude on the fire behaviors. From the results, the mass loss exhibits as a linear function of cell numbers in both Hefei and Lhasa. The mass loss also increases as altitude decreases for the same number of cells. The study also shows that the heat release rate, effective heat of combustion and heat flux decrease at higher altitude. The combustion efficiency in Lhasa is lower than that in Hefei.