Samsung\'s woes highlight explosive limits of lithium batteries1

SINGAPORE (Reuters)-Lithium-
It\'s been 25 years since the battery powered our portable devices.
But battery experts say consumer demand for smaller, more durable devices forces manufacturers to push the technology to test how much energy they can safely pack into the limits of smaller spaces.
\"The battery is really a bomb that releases energy in a controlled way,\" said Qichao Hu, who worked as a researcher at MIT and founder of battery startup SolidEnergy Systems.
\"There are basic safety issues with all batteries, and with the increase in energy density and the acceleration of charging speed, the obstacles to explosion are getting smaller and smaller.
On Tuesday, Samsung Electronics scrapped its flagship Note 7 smartphone and told customers to return their device after weeks of intense reports about the ignition of the phone and burning images of the phone.
In early September, the world\'s largest smartphone maker blamed the problem on \"a very rare manufacturing process error \".
The company said it was still investigating reports of a second batch of allegedly safe cell phones on fire.
The exact cause of these problems will be the subject of detailed research by regulators, companies and their suppliers.
Experts are confused about the reason for the overheating of the replacement of the phone (if not the battery.
Samsung said it was too early to speculate on the findings.
\"We are reviewing every step of our engineering, manufacturing and quality control processes,\" Samsung said in an email response to Reuters . \".
An official from South Korea\'s Technology and Standards Agency is also under investigation, saying that the failure of replacement equipment may be different from the problem with the original product.
Samsung SDI and Amperex Technology Co. , Ltd (ATL)
Samsung, which provides batteries to Samsung Electronics, declined to comment.
Samsung\'s Note 7 crisis may be the biggest, but the problem with lithiumIon is not new. The U. S.
Over the past year, the Consumer Product Safety Board has issued a recall of battery packs, snow blowing machines, hoverboards, flashlights and electric recliners, all due to fire caused by lithiumion batteries.
In the Boeing 2013, after some lithium, Boeing was forced to stop all of its advanced 787 aircraft.
The ion battery is on fire.
After the battery and charger changed, the fleet was allowed to resume the flight and have better control over the battery fire.
\"We maintain confidence in the overall improvement of the 787 battery system after this event, as well as the overall performance of the battery system and the safety of the aircraft, Boeing said after investigating an incident on 2014.
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Light weight, high energy lithium is the lightest of all metals, can pack a lot of energy into a small amount
Make it the perfect choice for batteries.
According to data from the United States, the market has grown from hundreds of millions of cells in 2000 to 8 billion last year. S.
Chemical Company.
But for the same reason, lithium
The built-in safety mechanism is required for ion batteries, which increases production costs.
According to Albemarle, with prices falling 14% per year over the past 15 years, smaller companies are shrinking on safety issues.
There is no evidence that Samsung or its battery supplier cut corners on the Note 7, and Tony Olsen, CEO of consulting firm D2 world, said the problem was not limited to cheaper products.
Ten years ago, he tested the laptop\'s battery, highlighting the danger of the battery catching fire. Some 9.
Sony subsequently recalled 6 million laptop batteries.
But, seven years later, when Olsen repeated the test on other laptop batteries, he found that \"despite a huge review, the battery safety design has barely changed.
According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Sony, Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba and Panasonic have recalled laptop battery packs this year due to fire hazards.
Panasonic, which provides the battery, said the problem was caused by the manufacturing problem it has now solved.
When asked about Samsung\'s predicament last week, Panasonic CEO kazuiro Tsuga told reporters that lithium-ion batteries may be prone to fire when the density increases and charges quickly. “It’s a trade-
Between the two. risk)and benefits.
We put safety first . \"
\"With current technology, it is extremely difficult to make the probability of such events zero.
\"Before the age of smartphones, users were not demanding their devices --
A few phone calls, a few text messages.
Today\'s phones, however, need to do more and are in constant use.
EMarketer, an advertising consultancy, said that for example, China Mobile users spend nearly twice as much on smartphones as they did four years ago.
This, in turn, drives manufacturers to make screens bigger, devices more powerful, and put more energy into smaller spaces.
No matter how complex the materials are, \"they are not 100% safe and will never be safe,\" said consultant Larsen . \".
\"From the perspective of lithium, what do we see --
Ion technology is where they begin to reach the limits of their safe energy density.
But experts disagree on this point.
Hong Kong start-up QFE plans to sell refrigerators
Indicates that there is still room for improvement in the battery size of the replacement diesel generator.
\"There is still a lot of room for development of lithium --
In terms of increasing the energy they can store, ion batteries. ”Long-
New technologies promised to make batteries safer are coming.
Tim Grejtak, an analyst at Lux Research, said dozens of startups are working on the problem, but it\'s hard to solve the scientific problem and it takes time.
According to Grejtak, the most promising candidate is California --
Based on Blue current, the gel electrolyte is used to work on high density, low flammable batteries. Massachusetts-
SolidEnergy Systems is working on a lithium-metal battery, which the founder says takes up half of the existing battery space.
By 2018, he said, it will be used first for high-altitude drones and consumer devices, including smartphones.