HEL’s participation in the Advanced Automative Battery conference in Orlando

HEL participated for the first time in the AABC Conference in Florida, both having an exhibition booth and making a technical presentation by HEL's managing director Dr Jasbir singh.

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The technical program for the conference is highly scientific in nature both strong commercial presence but also many academics in attendance. HEL's presentation that was delivered looked into the complementary role of adiabatic ("ARC-Type") calorimetery for battery thermal runaway testing and isothermal (controlled) measurement of heat release to provide the thermal management duty specification. HEL's standard BTC is now an established benchmark for runaway thermal testing of EV and other high energy batteries with the ability to test large batteries and packs.

The isothermal BTC version, iso-BTC, is relatively new generated a lot of interest among attendees and people were generally convinced that this is an essential part of the safety should be supplied. Knowing how much heat is generated when discharging Li-ion batteries can be used to design cooling systems controlled from a BMS. HEL's approach this form of heat measurement has the attraction of being on-line and providing a unique into the workings of batteries which developers can make use of to improve battery design.

A growing interest for HEL in the car battery market

The car battery market is definitely of growing interest that HEL group is continuing to tap into. Last year, from 8-9 December in Boston, HEL exhibited our Battery Testing Calorimeter for the first time at the ‘Battery Safety’ conference. This is one of the few conferences devoted to battery safety, especially thermal runaway potential and the role of adiabatic calorimeters such as our Battery Testing Calorimeter in helping to provide safety data. Our managing director, Dr Jasbir Singh, was one of the speakers at this two day conference and focused on the added value of videoing batteries undergoing thermal runaway, so that temperature information can be combined with photographic evidence, to learn about where and how batteries fail during thermal runaway. Our battery safety calorimeter generated a lot of interest.

Recently, in October 25-27, ‘The Battery Show’ conference was held in Detroit, US, is the heart of the US car industry. Exhibitors represented a wide range of products relating to the EV market, with safety being of minor interest. Although our Battery Testing Calorimeter (“ARC Type” system) was not taken to the exhibition, Dr Singh had taken some videos of batteries undergoing thermal runaways to the exhibition. He says about the videos that, ‘it is a rather unique capability; it generated a lot of interest’. From the exhibition, it was clear that the car battery market is seeing a lot of investment and the market is growing fast, as his conclusions were that ‘several car manufacturers are planning to include a budget for the BTC-ARC for their Thermal Safety Testing’.