Adaptive Pouch Cell Chamber

About this technology

Overview

Innovators at NASA Johnson Space Center have developed an adaptive pouch cell chamber, or “APCC” for short, whose chamber halves com-press and constrain a battery pouch cell or a prismatic cell while it is induced into thermal runaway (TR) for analysis. The device comprises an adaptive diaphragm to accommodate variations in the thickness of these types of battery cells without requiring significant changes in the hard-ware. While NASA’s previous cell chamber design was state-of-the-art, the APCC brings numerous enhancements to the prior NASA design. The prior design required two technicians and approximately one and a half hours for setup between consecutive tests. This down-time was partially caused by the needed separation of the cell chamber from the fractional thermal runaway calorimeter (FTRC) bore where the thermal energy from a TR event is measured when expelled by the APCC. Addi-tionally, various internals such as heating elements and thermal sensors required refurbishment between each test in which TR was achieved. The APCC incorporates a novel two-pin quick-disconnect whereby the cell chamber is easily separated from the FTRC. This quick release de-sign increases battery testing throughput while reducing complexity and number of parts. Furthermore, the APCC internal hardware was designed to be fully reusable, lending itself to more reliable and consistent energy yield calculations sought after by battery cell testing and manufacturing industries.