BEV Fire Safety Workshop

Background

As the United States and teh world move toward a carbon-free transportation furture to prevent the adverse impacts of global warming, transportation electrication will increase at a rapid pace and there will be significant growth in the use of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) over the next decade. However, the fire safety risks of BEVs have not been fully addressed, which has a great impact to the safe use of BEVs.

We need to plan, coordinate, and collaborate ahead of time to design safe Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), install safe standards-based infrastructure, and equip our first responders with advanced technologies and necessary knowledge, skills and abilities. thus the purpose of this workshop is to provide a platform for identifying the needs and approaches to plan for and mitigate BEV fire risks to enable massive transportation electrification. the workshop will feature a keynote session in the morning, and three roundtable discussions on different focus topics in the afternoon.

Event will be held on June 16th, 2022 from 8:30am-5:00pm CST

Located at Missouri University of Science & Technology, Kennedy Experimental Mine Builiding, 12350 Spencer Rd, Rolla, MO

Please note that there will be both in person and online components to this event.

Who Should Attend

Researchers, government agencies (including cities with BEV fleet), industry that use BEVs (airports, mining companies etc.), battery manufacturers, BEV companies, fire departments, and other relevant stakholders. 

Dr. Guang Xu

Associate Professor

Mining and Explosives Engineering, Missouri S&T

 

In order to register for this event please follow the link here. Please note that there will be both an in person as well as an online attendance option. In person attendance will be limited to 100 attendees.

Hosted by: College of Engineering and Computing, and Department of Mining and Explosives Engineering, Missouri S&T

Sponsored by: The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Mine Escape Research, Innovation and Technology Center, and Center for hazard Mitigation and Community Resilience.

TimeTopicPresenter

8:30am-8:40am

Welcome Remarks

Dr. Kamal Khayat, Interim Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation, Missouri S&T

8:40am-9:00am

BEV Fire Research at Missouri S&T

Guang Xu, associate professor, Missouri S&T

9:00am-9:30am

Lithium-ion battery technology and fire suppression considerations

Tom Dubaniewicz (Lead General Engineer, PE) and Liming Yuan (Lead Research General Engineer, Ph.D.), NIOSH

9:30am-10:00 am

The Safety-Related Challenges of Using Li-ion Batteries

Dr. Michael Pecht, professor, University of Maryland

10:00am-10:20am

Coffee Break

 

10:20am-10:50am

Nevada Gold Mines BEV Adoption Plan and Safety Concerns

Dan Stewart, Project Manager, Nevada Gold Mines

10:50 am-11:20 am

Multiphysics modeling of battery safety issues

Dr. Jun Xu, assistant professor, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

11:20am-11:50pm

Fire and Explosion Protection Considerations for Buildings Containing Storage, Assembly, and Testing of Li-Ion Batteries

Kamal Aljazireh, Senior Engineer, Industrial and Process Safety, Jensen Hughes

11:50am-12:20pm

The Chemistry Behind BEV: the Uniqueness of the Sandvik/Artisan Approach

Dr. Charles Mborah (Battery electric vehicles manager) and Blaine Sprouse (BEV Support Specialist) Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions

12:20pm-1:30pm

Lunch break

 
 

Afternoon

Round Table Discussion:

Session 1: Safe Infrastructure Installation for Transportation Electrification

Session 2: Thermal runaway mechanisms and battery material innovation

Session 3: BEV fire risks, firefighting, and emergency responses

 
 

4:50pm-5:00pm

Closing remarks

 

Dr. Kwame Awuah-Offei, Interim Director of Mining & Explosives Engineering, Missouri S&T

 

6:00pm-8:00pm

Social and Dinner

 
 

Guang Xu is an associate professor of mining engineering at Missouri S&T. Dr. Xu has expertise in fire safety and particulate matter monitoring and control. He is currently working on a project sponsored by NIOSH to investigate the fire risks of BEV in underground mines. Dr. Xu established the Ventilation, Safety and Health Lab (VSH Lab) at Missouri S&T, and currently manages a group with 5 graduate students and two postdoc fellows. He has sponsored research funding of over $850,000 from both federal agencies and industry sponsors. Before joining Missouri S&T in 2019, he worked as a faculty at Curtin University in Australia for 6 years. He obtained his PhD from Virginia Tech, and B.S. from China University of Mining and Technology.

Tom Dubaniewicz is a General Engineer with the NIOSH Pittsburgh Mining Research Division. He is principal investigator of a research project on mitigating fire and explosion hazards of lithium ion batteries. He is a U.S. representative on an International Electrotechnical Commission standards committee for explosion-protected equipment. Tom is a licensed Professional Engineer in Pennsylvania.

Liming Yuan is a Lead Research General Engineer at Mining Systems Safety Branch of Pittsburgh Mining Research Division (PMRD), NIOSH. His research at NIOSH focuses on mine fire prevention and control including characterization of mine fires using real-time atmospheric monitoring data, engineering design of mine fire protection and atmospheric monitoring systems, spontaneous combustion of coals in longwall gob areas, equipment fire prevention and suppression, and smoke control and management in underground mine fires. Recently, he has been working on lithium-ion battery thermal runaway and battery fire suppression.

Michael Pecht is a professor and the founder and director of CALCE (Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering) at the University of Maryland, which is funded by over 150 of the world’s leading electronics companies at more than US$6M/year. He is currently serving as editor-in-chief of Circuit World. He served as editor-in-chief of IEEE Access for 6 years, as editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Reliability for 9 years, and as editor-in-chief of Microelectronics Reliability for 16 years. He has also served on three U.S. National Academy of Science studies, two U.S. Congressional investigations in automotive safety, and as an expert to the U.S. FDA. He consults for 22 major international electronics companies, providing expertise in strategic planning, design, test, prognostics, IP and risk assessment of electronic products and systems.

Jun Xu is an assistant professor at University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His group focuses on the safety issues of energy storage systems through sophisticated multiphysics modeling, advanced materials and structures design, and novel experiment device development. Dr. Jun Xu now serves as the Executive Committee of Advanced Energy System Division, Chair of Energy Conversion & Storage Committee, and Chair of Multifunctional Materials Committee, American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME). He is the Founder and Chair of Automotive & Battery Safety Conference (ABSC). He has so far published more than 110 peer-reviewed papers in top journals with more than 3400 citations, H-index=32.

Kamal M. Aljazireh, PE, is an industrial process safety and fire protection consultant based in Chicago with experience in hazard analysis and evaluation, hazard mitigation techniques and requirements, code compliance studies, and specification of fire and explosion protection features for various industrial applications. His experience focuses on developing fire and explosion risk reduction solutions for industrial processes handling hazardous materials as well as applications in lithium-ion battery technology such as energy storage systems, electric vehicle plants, and battery assembly/testing.

Charles Mborah is the Battery Electric Vehicles Manager at Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions. Prior to his current role, he held the roles of Senior Reliability Engineer with Kinross Gold Corporation, USA; Process Reliability Engineer with Barrick Gold Corporation, USA, Business Analysts with Charter Communications, USA, and as a Quality Engineer with JHENT Engineering Consult, Ghana. He obtained his PhD in mining engineering and MS in geology and geophysics from Missouri S&T, Rolla, USA in May 2016, and May 2018, respectively.

Blaine Sprouse is a BEV Support Specialist with Sandvik. In his current role, he works directly with the Sandvik factories, management, technicians, and customers on projects/trials. Prior to the current role, he served the field service group specifically for BEV equipment. He delivered the first Z-50 to Turquoise Ridge, helped grow and establish the project as the trial progressed. Before working at Sandivik, he worked for LockHeed Martin Space, Barrick, and served in the US Navy.