(Radio Iowa) – An Iowa State University researcher is using a special tool to test the limits of lithium-ion batteries. Todd Kingston says the device called the accelerating rate calorimeter or ARC. “It enables us to do various types of electrochemical, thermal, mechanical and electrical abuse testing in a very safe manner,” he says. Kingston purchased the ARC with a grant from the U-S Department of Defense’s Office of Naval Research. It can safely recreate the conditions that cause batteries to heat up. “It’s specifically designed to contain a thermal runaway event, explosions of the battery,” Kingston says. Kingston says they can push the batteries beyond their charging limits, or submit them to mechanical abuse.

“Mechanical abuse could be like a crush test. So if you apply pressure to a battery, some batteries are designed, they have a kind of a rigid can and can withstand some pressure. But after enough pressure is applied, you can start to have mechanical deformation and start to actually mechanically deform the active materials inside of the battery,” he says. Kingston is an associate professor of mechanical engineering and says they want to learn how to prevent issues with the batteries. “Ultimately we are interested in improving the safety and the performance of batteries. That being said, I don’t design batteries myself, but we can provide lots of information that would inform the design or the guidelines or the use of battery in various applications,” Kingston says

Waste haulers say lithium-ion batteries have increasingly caused problems with fires in garbage trucks and landfills, and are encouraging everyone to recycle batteries. Kingston says his research could also help in the recycling process. “Recycling them, even the collection and transport of batteries, you know, ones that are reached their end of life and are looking to be recycled, there’s a lot of safety concerns associated with just, you know, that process the recycling process and how do we safely transport them, how do we safely recycle them. So there’s a lot to learn and a lot that we need to still improve on,” Kingston says. He says the are testing a range of batteries used for various applications from smaller ones to larger ones used in electric vehicles.