NFPA Journal - January/February 2018 - 11

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BURNED SMELL
A fire-damaged hoverboard, the result of
a lithium-ion battery malfunction.

T E C H N O L O GY

POWER PROBLEM
AS ISSUES CONTINUE FOR PRODUCTS USING
LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES, RESEARCH INTO
SAFER ALTERNATIVES PICKS UP SPEED
By Angelo Verzoni
ithium-ion batteries once again made safety
headlines as a new round of hoverboard
recalls struck the market this holiday season.
In November, the United States Consumer
Product Safety Commission (CPSC) announced
recalls for about 14,000 of the two-wheeled, self-balancing
motorized scooters. Several brands were affected, but all
share the same problem: a lithium-ion battery that can overheat and catch fire or explode.
The recalled hoverboards join a growing list of products
containing the potentially dangerous batteries-a list that
includes earlier iterations of hoverboards, but also smaller
products like cell phones. In 2016, nearly 2 million Samsung
Galaxy smartphones were recalled after reports of fires and
explosions related to failures of the handheld devices' batteries. The CPSC notes, however, that these failures can be more

AP/WIDE WORLD

dangerous when they involve larger batteries found in larger
products like the hoverboards. In March 2017, for instance,
two young girls died in a house fire in Pennsylvania sparked
by a recharging hoverboard.
In recent years, the recalls and media reports have triggered a flood of research into how lithium-ion batteries could
be improved or replaced to reduce the danger to consumers
and others.
A study published in the journal Nature Energy in November touts "fire-extinguishing organic electrolytes" as one
possible solution to lithium-ion battery woes. Conducted
by researchers at the University of Tokyo, the study reports
the use of an electrolyte made with trimethyl phosphate, a
flame-retardant chemical, in a lithium-ion battery, which
traditionally contains a carbon-based, flammable electrolyte.
Similar efforts have in the past yielded new batteries that
didn't perform as well as traditional ones, but the Tokyo
researchers say their battery offers performance "comparable
or superior to that of [ones containing] conventional flammable carbonate electrolytes." This is because the trimethyl
phosphate-containing electrolyte has an "unusual passivation character," or ability to prevent corrosion, the study says.
It's promising research, and it comes on the tails of
similarly optimistic studies. In April, for example, United
States Navy researchers developed a zinc-ion battery with a
non-flammable electrolyte with performance comparable to
batteries that use lithium.
Fire Protection Research Foundation (FPRF) work has
focused on the applications and fire hazards of current
lithium-ion batteries rather than battery chemistry, said Casey
Grant, director of the foundation. "The emergency response
and fire protection communities must be ready to address
new and different hazards, and to do so they need to be aware
of the hazards associated with lithium-ion batteries most commonly being used today," Grant said. Past FPRF reports have,
for example, focused on the effectiveness of sprinkler systems
to extinguish fires in lithium-ion battery storage facilities.
NFPA has also taken steps to educate the public about
lithium-ion battery safety. NFPA has released safety tip
sheets on lithium-ion batteries, and even hoverboards specifically, which can indicate possible warning signs including
strange smells or a tendency to overheat. NFPA's webpage
on energy storage systems, nfpa.org/ess, includes resources
on lithium-ion battery safety, such as tip sheets, research
reports, and recent NFPA Journal articles.
N F PA . O R G / J O U R N A L * NFPA JOURNAL

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - January/February 2018