By Battery Power Staff
October 16, 2018 | KULR today announced that NASA has placed an initial order for the Internal Short Circuit (ISC) trigger battery cells, which can replicate lithium-ion battery cell failures in battery pack designs. The ISC is licensed, manufactured and distributed by KULR under an exclusive agreement with the DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
“We are pleased to continue our long and productive relationship with NASA and help them continue their pioneering work on battery safety,” Michael Mo, CEO of KULR, said in a press release. “As the exclusive commercialization partner for this ground-breaking technology, we will be providing NASA with initial test cells this quarter and ramp up commercial production in the first quarter of 2019.”
“We have seen growing interest in ISC trigger cells from different industries and geographic regions. We have been working with tier-one battery cell manufacturers to make the trigger cells in both 18650 and 21700 form factors. We expect 2019 to be a breakout year for this ISC technology and establish it as the go-to standard for battery design safety testing for various industries and applications. Our ISC testing technology makes batteries safer and global battery manufacturers are realizing it,” Mo wrote.
Lithium-ion batteries are the industry and consumer standard for portable power; billions of individual battery cells exist and billions more are planned for production. But lithium-ion batteries fail, sometimes with catastrophic results. Due to the relative rarity of cell failures, scientists and researchers struggle to reliably or accurately replicate latent defect cell failures in lab settings, impeding research into safer battery technology.
KULR’s core technology is a NASA-developed, space-used, vertically-aligned carbon fiber material that is lighter, more flexible, and more efficient than traditional thermal management products. As pure carbon, KULR fiber is perfectly heat efficient. And because it behaves like a flexible fabric it can fit with just about any power or electronic configuration in extremely demanding spaces with minimal contact pressure, increasing efficiency and safety for a variety of thermal management and energy storage uses across a range of markets.
