Safe-Li’s fire-safe Lithium-ion battery design achieves key milestone scaling its technology from coin cell format to pouch cell format.
(PITTSBURGH, PA) Feb. 5 GreenSwans, a climate technology company that identifies and commercializes technologies to address the $2+ trillion global climate economy, announced today a breakthrough in its fire-safe Lithium battery technology, called Safe-Li. Last March, Safe-li was awarded a grant from Shell GameChanger to fund a research and development project designed to scale its battery design. The company announced today the successful completion of the project’s first phase that included passing safety and performance benchmarks. As a result, Shell approved Safe-Li to move to the project’s final phase which will scale the design to a pre-A battery sample.
“We are very pleased with the technical progress made by Safe-Li during Phase-I,” said Veronica Simmonds, Shell’s Commercial Innovation Partnerships Manager. “We decided to grant an approval of the results and endorsement by the Shell GameChanger Tollgate Panel to continue to the final Phase-II of the program. We are looking forward to Safe-Li’s Graduation Panel.”
Phase one resulted in a single-layer pouch cell prototype that passed performance testing benchmarks, comparable to current state-of-the-art Lithium-ion batteries. Further, during a limited sample size safety test, Safe-Li outperformed the polymer membrane benchmark battery in both the nail puncture and external heat testing. In the nail puncture test, the benchmark battery failed while the Safe-Li battery continued to operate at full capacity during the entire test. In the external heat test, Safe-Li continued to operate 40% longer than the benchmark battery design.
“Safe-Li exceeded our expectations for both a side-by-side nail puncture and an external heat safety test, proving the structural and thermal stability of this technology,’” said GreenSwans’ CEO Chetan Chothani. “Our goal is to design and deliver a commercial Lithium-ion battery that is significantly more resistant to fire and potentially fire-safe – with this big step forward in scaling the technology we’re well on our way.”
Safe-Li’s technology is based on chemistry that includes an electrode-supported Zeolite membrane separator that is both structurally strong and highly wettable. The electrode is also non-flammable and its high wettability further enables the use of potential fire-safe electrolytes while maintaining battery performance under enhanced thermal conditions. According to industry data, including from a leading car battery manufacturer, SES AI, most new battery designs do not make it through the scale-up to pouch cell phase. Safe-Li is now constructing and testing multi-layer pouch cells with the goal of producing a 1 Ah pre-A battery sample by Q1, 2024.
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About GreenSwans
Green Swans is a climate technology company dedicated to identifying and commercializing visionary technologies for a green, clean world. With a founding team that has led or built 22 companies in the industrial manufacturing, software, technology, and industrial process automation sectors – GreenSwans is uniquely suited to source, grow, and bring climate technology solutions to market.
