Why does science post | lithium battery explode?The replaceable new batteries have appeared at the Winter Olympics

In my impression, from time to time, there will be news about the battery combustion and explosion of lithium batteries. The most terrible scene is that last year, an electric car spontaneously ignited in the elevator. Since then, countless buildings have posted signs to prohibit electric vehicles from entering the elevator.

The emergence of lithium batteries has brought us into a new era of electric energy, when the three scientists who contributed the most to the development of lithium-ion battery technology won the Nobel Prize for chemistry.But why did the lithium battery explode?

Simply put, the reason for the lithium battery explosion was its structural damage.Lithium battery is mainly composed of positive electrode, negative electrode, electrolyte and diaphragm. Positive electrode is generally metal oxide, and negative electrode is generally a graphite structure embedded with a large number of lithium ions, and electrolyte is generally organic esters, with low melting point and combustible.

In lithium batteries, the diaphragm plays a role of isolating the positive and negative poles, but if for some reasons, high temperature and high pressure, physical damage and other reasons lead to the diaphragm failure, it will cause a short circuit, resulting in combustion and even explosion.

Can you prevent the lithium battery from 100% explosion?Scientists say, as far as existing technology goes, lithium batteries always have a certain chance of accidents, even if the probability is very low.

However, solutions are not just lithium batteries, there are alternative energy storage solutions.At this Winter Olympics, there is an iron-chrome flow battery that has been put into use, and its electrolyte solution is a water system solution, with no explosion, and high efficiency, high safety, low cost, and many recyclable times.

However, iron-chrome liquid flow batteries are just commercially available from the laboratory, and are only used for large grid energy storage, not a complete replacement for lithium batteries.

Sodium batteries are also one of the alternatives.Ningde Times released the news not long ago, saying that it had started the sodium ion battery industrialization layout, and is expected to form a basic industrial chain in next year, namely 2023.

Sodium ion battery what is the benefits, I tell you, first of all, this element of sodium on earth reserves are very large, is thousands of times of lithium, the cost is very low, and sodium, lithium belongs to the same elements, physical and chemical characteristics and storage mechanism are very like, sodium battery anode can also use cheaper aluminum, not like lithium battery, have to use copper.There are also technical problems that need to be solved.For example, sodium batteries are more likely to collapse during charging and discharge, so they need a more stable structure and a higher redox potential.