On Oct.15,a battery fire knocked out power at a key data center in South Korea,causing the country's two Internet giants,Naver and Kakao,to shut down services and severely affecting almost all sectors of the country,including finance and transportation.
According to the South Korean police,the fire occurred near A lithium battery rack in the electrical room on the third floor of the basement of the data center.The power supply was stacked in five battery racks,and one of the lithium batteries sparked a fire before automatic fire extinguishing equipment was activated and sprayed with gas.
The data center,jointly built by SK and IBM,will manage the data of key platform operators such as SK Telecom,Kakao,a social networking app,and Naver,a portal site.As a result,Internet services in South Korea were largely paralyzed after the fire broke out.Kakao's share price fell 4%to 5%as a result of the accident,wiping 2 trillion won(10.1 billion yuan)off its market value.
The fire was put out eight hours later at around 11:46 p.m.Friday,police said.No one was injured,but all the batteries were destroyed in the blaze.
Lithium battery fire incident occurred frequently in recent years,the battery safety problem has become one of the important issues of new energy electric vehicle,a well-known lithium battery fire is different from general fire,after a fire is very difficult to extinguish,along with the increasingly wide application of lithium batteries,combustion and explosion safety issues are development and application has been the battery to break through the bottle cap.
Generally speaking,the direct cause of lithium battery fire explosion accident is the battery heat out of control.Cause thermal runaway,on the one hand is the cell itself has defects,on the other hand,by the external impact of heat release,will also lead to thermal runaway.Improving battery consistency is an important way to ensure battery string security and reliability.
The common lithium-ion batteries on the market are basically divided into four categories,among which LiFePO4 battery has the best thermal stability,LiMn2O4 battery is the second best,LiNiCoMnO2 battery is slightly worse,and LiCoO2 battery has the worst thermal stability.LiFePO4 battery has long cycle life,small side effects,low cost,large charge-discharge ratio,good stability at high temperature,but relatively low energy density.LiMn204 battery cost is low,low toxicity,but poor thermal stability,short cycle life,less applications.LiNiCoMnO2 battery has high energy density,but the temperature increases after high-power charging and discharging,and the oxygen is released at high temperature.It has poor thermal stability and short life.