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Batteries
Special Issues
Thermal Runaway and Thermal Management: Toward Safe and Reliable Batteries
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Thermal Runaway and Thermal Management: Toward Safe and Reliable Batteries

A special issue of Batteries (ISSN 2313-0105). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Storage System Aging, Diagnosis and Safety".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2026 | Viewed by 3471

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Xiaoqing Zhu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Beijing Laboratory of New Energy Storage Technology, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China
Interests: lithium-ion batteries; battery energy storage system; electric vehicles; thermal management; thermal runaway; safety management; aging and failure mechanisms; states estimation; battery health assessment and lifetime prediction

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to showcase manuscripts that demonstrate efficient safety and thermal management methods/hardware for safe and reliable batteries, including low cost, high accuracy, low energy consumption, good consistency in battery packs, high robustness against changes in working conditions, and good generalization. 

Potential topics include, but are not limited to: 

  • Thermal runaway behavior of batteries in multiple application scenarios;
  • Thermal runaway mechanisms and thermal propagation mitigation of battery cell/module/pack/cluster;
  • High-safety and high-performance battery design;
  • Prediction of the battery’s state of health and state of safety;
  • Early warning methods and strategies for battery thermal runaway risk;
  • Battery safety management methods, strategies, and their software/hardware implementations (from cell design to system management);
  • Battery thermal management system (including but not limited to immersion liquid cooling, air cooling, cold plate cooling, phase change materials, etc.);
  • Optimization of the battery’s thermal management system (including but not limited to structure, channels, operation strategies, etc.);
  • Hardware implementation of a battery thermal management system.

Dr. Xiaoqing Zhu
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Batteries is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • lithium-ion batteries
  • thermal runaway
  • thermal runaway mechanisms
  • thermal management
  • safety management
  • aging and failure mechanisms
  • fault diagnosis
  • battery health assessment and lifetime prediction
  • heat generation mechanisms and modeling
  • electric vehicles (EVs)
  • energy storage system

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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25 pages, 3666 KB  
Article
Toward Safe and Reliable Batteries: Multi-Objective Optimization of a Serpentine Cooling Channel for Battery Thermal Management Using GPR and NSGA-II
by Nguyen Minh Chau, Le Van Quynh, Nguyen Manh Quang, Nguyen Thi Hong Ngoc, Nguyen Thanh Cong and Nguyen Trong Hieu
Batteries 2026, 12(4), 138; https://doi.org/10.3390/batteries12040138 - 14 Apr 2026
Viewed by 657
Abstract
Thermal management plays a critical role in maintaining the safety and reliability of lithium-ion batteries by limiting excessive temperature rise and reducing non-uniform temperature distribution within battery packs. This study proposes a geometry-driven multi-objective optimization framework for a serpentine liquid-cooling channel to enhance [...] Read more.
Thermal management plays a critical role in maintaining the safety and reliability of lithium-ion batteries by limiting excessive temperature rise and reducing non-uniform temperature distribution within battery packs. This study proposes a geometry-driven multi-objective optimization framework for a serpentine liquid-cooling channel to enhance the thermal behavior of a battery module under fixed operating conditions. A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model was developed for a 40-cell battery module, and Latin hypercube sampling was employed to generate training data for Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) surrogate models. Three geometric design variables, namely, channel thickness (tc), wall thickness (tw), and contact surface angle (θ), were considered, while the maximum battery temperature (Tmax) and the maximum temperature difference within the battery pack (ΔTmax) were selected as optimization objectives. Sensitivity analysis showed that wall thickness was the dominant parameter, contributing 65.41% and 64.77% to the variations in Tmax and ΔTmax, respectively, followed by channel thickness, whereas the influence of the contact surface angle was comparatively limited. The trained GPR models were then coupled with the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) to identify the optimal channel geometry. The optimal design was obtained at tc = 2.95 mm, tw = 0.949 mm, and θ = 60°. CFD validation confirmed that the optimized design reduced Tmax from 307.639 K to 306.653 K, corresponding to a temperature drop of 0.986 K, while ΔTmax decreased from 8.752 K to 7.887 K, representing a reduction of 9.88%. Although the reduction in Tmax is modest, the improvement in temperature uniformity is meaningful, which benefits cell consistency and long-term reliability. These results demonstrate that geometric optimization of cooling channels can provide an effective and energy-efficient approach to improving thermal uniformity in lithium-ion battery systems. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thermal Runaway and Thermal Management: Toward Safe and Reliable Batteries)
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24 pages, 17655 KB  
Article
Mechanisms of Electrochemical Performance Degradation and Thermal Runaway Risk Evolution in LiFePO4 Pouch Batteries After Extreme Low-Temperature Storage
by Feng Gao, Desheng Qiang, Yanping Bai, Zongliang Zhai, Yechang Gao, Weixing Lu and Ruixin Jia
Batteries 2026, 12(2), 67; https://doi.org/10.3390/batteries12020067 - 15 Feb 2026
Viewed by 1204
Abstract
This research focuses on the passive behavior changes of 3 Ah pouch LiFePO4 (LFP) batteries during low-temperature storage, a point often neglected in previous studies. This experiment examines the low-temperature non-operational endurance of fully charged batteries (FCB) at 25 °C, −10 °C, [...] Read more.
This research focuses on the passive behavior changes of 3 Ah pouch LiFePO4 (LFP) batteries during low-temperature storage, a point often neglected in previous studies. This experiment examines the low-temperature non-operational endurance of fully charged batteries (FCB) at 25 °C, −10 °C, and −35 °C. Battery performance reliability under these conditions is evaluated through capacity retention and internal resistance (IR) analysis. Microstructural changes on the surfaces of thawed battery electrodes are acquired using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques. After seven freeze–thaw cycles, the maximum usable capacity is marginally affected. Notably, a pronounced increase in polarization resistance (Rp) has been observed, particularly at −10 °C conditions, with an increase of about 40.57 mΩ. Microstructural analyses reveal that low-temperature storage significantly led to cracking of the electrolyte layer and of the particles in the anode material. Subsequently, at room temperature (RT, 25 °C), external short circuit (ESC) tests were performed on thawed batteries. At 50C, the peak temperatures recorded at the center of the FCB−10, FCB25, and FCB−35 batteries are 104.35 °C, 94.67 °C, and 90.56 °C, respectively. The batteries exhibit rupture at approximately 47 s, 60 s, and 70 s during the ESC process. The results show that battery FCB−35 exhibits a slower temperature rise and delayed physical damage during ESC. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thermal Runaway and Thermal Management: Toward Safe and Reliable Batteries)
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Review

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30 pages, 9167 KB  
Review
A Review of Thermal Safety and Management of Second-Life Batteries: Cell Screening, Pack Configuration and Health Estimation
by Md Imran Hasan, Gang Lei, Dylan Lu and Pablo Poblete Durruty
Batteries 2026, 12(3), 99; https://doi.org/10.3390/batteries12030099 - 15 Mar 2026
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1110
Abstract
Electric vehicle (EV) adoption is generating a rapidly increasing stream of retired lithium-ion batteries for second-life deployment. However, thermal safety concerns continue to limit their reuse. This paper reviews second-life battery (SLB) thermal safety and management and organizes existing work through a mechanism-to-deployment [...] Read more.
Electric vehicle (EV) adoption is generating a rapidly increasing stream of retired lithium-ion batteries for second-life deployment. However, thermal safety concerns continue to limit their reuse. This paper reviews second-life battery (SLB) thermal safety and management and organizes existing work through a mechanism-to-deployment framework linking four domains: degradation mechanisms, cell screening, pack configuration, and monitoring. Evidence indicates that thermal risk depends on the degradation pathway rather than capacity fade. In fact, cells with comparable capacity can exhibit substantially different trigger temperatures depending on whether lithium plating or solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI) growth dominates. Therefore, capacity-based screening is insufficient because cells that satisfy capacity thresholds may still remain thermally unstable. The four domains are tightly coupled: the degradation pathway determines screening requirements; screening outcomes constrain pack design; pack topology influences fault escalation; and together these factors determine what monitoring can reliably detect. This review highlights three gaps and outlines future research directions in the field of SLB thermal safety and management: limited aged-cell thermal characterization by degradation pathway, insufficient diagnostic validation under industrial-throughput conditions, and the incomplete translation of screening outputs into design rules. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Thermal Runaway and Thermal Management: Toward Safe and Reliable Batteries)
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