Currently TES receives a large amount of non-homogenous lithium-ion mobile phone batteries that need to be discharged prior to shredding. Non-discharged lithium-ion batteries represent a significant combustion risk if they are damaged or tampered. A damaged battery cell can go into thermal runaway, producing enough heat to cause adjacent battery cells to also go into thermal runaway. This produces a fire that repeatedly flares up as each battery cell in turn ruptures and releases its contents. These types of fires are extremely dangerous, life-threatening, and difficult to extinguish.
The broad range of non-homogenous lithium-ion batteries received also makes it difficult to define a standard process.
Objectives:
TES would like to explore the possibility of automating this process.
There are efficiency and risk mitigation benefits to be gained by establishing a timely, low risk and automated process. Some of the questions to be posed include:
- Can a lithium-ion battery be efficiently and effectively discharged using a chemical process?
- Can a shredder be designed to safely accommodate thermal events during shredding of charged lithium-ion batteries?
- Could individual batteries be discharged by connecting to terminals? Would need AI vision to identify shape of battery, find terminals and start discharge. However, we do process thousands of these type of batteries per day, so the process has to be fast.
- With an efficient discharge process could the energy be captured to be put back into the grid.
