Tag Archives: fire suppression

Johnson Controls launches ANSUL N-101 Clean Agent Vehicle Fire Suppression System

Johnson Controls has launched the ANSUL® N-101 Clean Agent Vehicle Fire Suppression System, a solution that is specially designed to protect energised electrical equipment inside unoccupied electrical cabinets on board heavy industrial vehicles.

Using a naturally occurring zero-global warming potential (0 GWP) nitrogen agent, the ANSUL N-101 system provides a sustainable and electrically non-conductive fire suppression solution for Class C and E vehicle hazards in mining, forestry, heavy construction and other industries, the company says.

Kristin Ryczek, Global Product Manager – Vehicle Fire Suppression Systems, Johnson Controls, said: “Heavy work vehicles operate for long periods in harsh, rugged environments and require reliable on-board fire protection to help safeguard the most vital, fire-prone electrical equipment. With ANSUL’s long history of using inert gases, like nitrogen for successful building protection applications, it makes sense for us to apply those same proven concepts to a system designed specifically for the rugged mobile equipment industry.”

The ANSUL N-101 suppression solution leaves no residue or by-products, according to the company. This means it will not cause damage to the protected electrical assets nor require clean-up because of discharge, making it a better option for people, equipment and the planet.

With an operational range of -54°C- 99°C, a simplified single-tank, single-nozzle design and heavy-gauge steel bracket construction, the system is engineered to withstand the harsh conditions found in rugged industrial environments. The system’s nitrogen cartridge is equipped with an electric-pneumatic actuator and is available in two sizes, 0.65 cu.m and 1.56 cu.m, to support a wide range of vehicle applications.

Johnson Controls has further enhanced the performance of the ANSUL N-101 Clean Agent System by using a hydraulic hose distribution line and 360° nozzle, it says. This equipment enables the system to flood the electrical enclosure quickly and efficiently, and reduce the oxygen content within that space, even when un-closable openings are present, the company claims.

Johnson Controls developed the ANSUL N-101 Clean Agent Vehicle Fire Suppression System for use with ANSUL CHECKFIRE detection and actuation systems. It can be used as a standalone system in combination with automatic detection/releasing, or as part of a complete vehicle protection solution.

Sandvik setting the battery system safety standard in underground mining

In the three-and-a-half years since Sandvik acquired Artisan Vehicle Systems, the mining industry’s appetite and demand for battery-electric vehicle (BEV) solutions has grown exponentially.

From conversations that were concentrated to mainly North America and involved the trial of BEVs, the sector has moved on to discuss commercial, fleet-sized applications to be deployed across the globe.

Sandvik, itself, highlighted this in July with the award of its biggest BEV contract to date – a 20-strong equipment order from Foran Mining in Canada.

With this increased industry focus on underground electrification with the help of battery-electric equipment, the discussions around battery system safety have also stepped up in terms of both the number and complexity of conversations.

These are conversations Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions’ Battery and Hybrid Electric Vehicles (BHEV) Business Unit is more than prepared to have, according to the unit’s VP Strategy and Commercial, Jakob Rutqvist.

“It’s on us as an early adopter to spread the learnings and help educate the industry in terms of battery safety and engaging with the stakeholders involved in the supply chain,” he told IM.

Sandvik, with the help of Artisan, has clocked up hundreds of thousands of operating hours in terms of BEVs in mining over the last decade or so.

This has been underwritten by the Artisan battery system architecture, which has been designed to move with both mining market demands and battery technology.

Brian Huff, Vice President of Technology for the BHEV business unit, expands on this: “We produce in-house battery systems, which gives us a lot of capability in terms of controlling the design. We can be much more reactive to the field in terms of making changes to the design, versus an OEM that is using batteries designed for automotive or industrial applications where those higher volumes tend to drive design decisions.

“We don’t have that diversion of focus; we do what is right for mining.”

Doing what is ‘right for mining’ has led to Sandvik investing in a state-of-the-art battery system facility in Camarillo, California, boasting 100 MWh of annual battery production capacity. This same facility acts as a training and customer visitor centre with a test ramp that has a 20% grade and a whole area for mucking on the property.

Sandvik’s state-of-the-art battery system facility in Camarillo, California, boasts 100 MWh of annual battery production capacity, as well as acting as a training and customer visitor centre with a test ramp that has a 20% grade and a whole area for mucking on the property

Huff said on the latter: “We will test every product that leaves the shop and do a lot of development work – our development cycle has, as a result, sped up.”

Beyond this, Sandvik’s mining sector commitment has seen the company invest in a battery system platform that – when it comes to safety – recognises the realities of operating machinery at underground mines.

Quality cells with the right chemistry

The inherent safety of Sandvik’s battery system starts at the cell level.

Artisan partnered with China-based CALB all the way back in 2015 as it looked to shore up a reliable and high-quality battery cell supply that could seamlessly fit into its battery system architecture.

Seven years on – half of that under the guise of Sandvik – Huff sees no reason to change.

“What matters from a battery system safety standpoint is consistency and high-quality cells,” he said. “That is achieved through high-volume manufacturing tied with automation and production controls that ensure the quality of production.

“CALB, which makes a lot of batteries for stationary and bus applications in China and globally, has all the compliance and testing completed on their cells and meet all the requirements from a safety standpoint.”

The battery cell manufacturer was also one of the early movers in the lithium iron phosphate (LFP)-based battery space, and Huff is keen to point out the safety benefits that come with using such battery chemistry.

“Our approach to battery safety, which is part of the standardised Sandvik approach for safety with ISO and other standardisation bodies, is to look, first, at reducing the severity of a potential incident or eliminating the hazard,” Huff said. “For us that means reducing the severity of a thermal runaway, which is primarily a chemistry choice.”

Thermal runaway is categorised as a chain reaction within a battery cell that occurs when the temperature inside a battery reaches the point that causes a chemical reaction to take place inside the battery. This chemical reaction produces heat, which drives the temperature higher, causing further chemical reactions to take place and further heat generation. Excessive heat generation at an accelerated rate can cause batteries to melt or be damaged beyond repair, or, in extreme circumstances, ignite and start fires.

With the potential to cause such an incident, thermal runaway preventions are often the first thing battery companies mention in safety briefings.

When plotting the main commercial battery chemistries against the heat-release-rate (HRR) on a graph, it is easy to see Huff’s point (see graph below). The rate of temperature rise (left) indicates the severity of a thermal event, with the higher the HRR, the harder it is to contain an incident, Sandvik says.

Taking all this into account, the LFP rate of temperature rise is over 100 times lower than other batteries with chemistries such as nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC), lithium-cobalt oxide (LCO) and lithium-nickel-cobalt-aluminium (NCA), making containment more achievable, according to the company.

In thermal runaway tests, LFP-based cells have emitted a flammable gaseous electrolyte but do not self-ignite during standardised safety tests, Sandvik clarified.

Tests on batteries looking at the release of harmful emissions have also highlighted the safety benefits of using LFP-based batteries. A US CDC nail penetration test showed minimal emissions of the likes of carbon monoxide, nitrous oxides and hydrogen fluoride, compared with much higher levels emitted from NMC- and lithium-ion-manganese-oxide (LMO)-based batteries.

Passive and intrinsic safety

The battery chemistry choice fits into the ‘severity reduction’ basket in terms of safety controls, but it is not where Sandvik’s battery system safety approach ends.

“We then move to reducing the likelihood of the hazard occurring through design controls,” Huff said. “This is where the engineering comes in, with the best design controls often deemed to be passive and intrinsic – where you don’t have to do anything in the case an event arises.”

Sandvik has more than a handful of such controls in its locker, starting at the cell.

The cells in Sandvik’s battery systems are equipped with high-reliability vents that prevent pressure build-up in case of thermal runaway. This eliminates the risk of a case rupture/burst, according to the company. They also come equipped with a laser-welded aluminium housing that offers thermal conduction and mechanical safety with mylar and polycarbonate insulation.

A shutdown separator coating, meanwhile, is designed to melt if the temperature inside the cell reaches 110-130°C, blocking the ion flow, interrupting the current and preventing further temperature increases. An additional porous ceramic separator coating melts at 160-175°C, bonding with a polypropylene electrode separator to help block dendrites and provide structural support to prevent shrinkage and maintain the separation of electrodes.

Huff expands on this: “Dendrite growth is an effect of overcurrent, overcharging, charging at cold temperatures and a side effect of ageing. Excessive growth can result in an electrical short as well, which can then lead to thermal runaway.”

In Sandvik’s battery system design, a battery cell (far left) is placed into a battery module (second from left), which is then incorporated into a battery pack (second from right). This pack is then enclosed in a cage (far right)

These cells are placed into a battery module, which operates at low voltage for safe servicing, comes with isolating foam potting to block moisture and prevent isolation faults, offers thermal conduction to draw heat away from a hot cell and distribute it across the entire module to moderate temperature rises, and offers environmental and mechanical damage protection, according to Sandvik.

These modules are then incorporated into a battery pack, which comes with mechanical protections such as a 6-mm plate steel enclosure; a non-conductive coolant to manage temperature during charging; and gore vents and drains to prevent pressure build-up, allowing vented gases to expel air in the enclosure and fluids to drain rather than collect, all while limiting ingress of dust and contaminants.

The redundant configuration of the battery pack contactors allows the circuit to be broken in the case of over/under voltage, isolation fault, over temperature or overcurrent, the company says. This may also be triggered by a high-voltage interlock loop (HVIL) system. Lastly, the inclusion of 600 A fuses provides protection against overcurrent and damage from external shorts.

Finally, this battery pack is enclosed in a cage that offers, Sandvik says, robust mechanical protection, mobility and swap-ability, plus quick access to the pack modules without cage disassembly.

Beyond design controls

“We start with the assumption that, however good, design controls should never be believed to be 100% effective,” Huff said. “You cannot just approach the issue by never considering the likelihood of thermal runaway, for instance. It is unrealistic, especially in a mining environment where accidents happen, damage occurs and mistakes in servicing can arise.”

This leads the company on to the active controls it includes in its battery systems.

“All this starts with monitoring,” Huff said. “It could be looking at temperatures – the case temperature, terminal temperature, as well as the temperature of the conductors – and voltage.”

The Battery System Controller (BSC) is responsible for protecting the battery – calculating the limits and thresholds, monitoring the HVIL, isolation, temperature and currents and connecting the battery and communicating the status – but it is not the system that implements the controls and limitations.

“The battery system controller communicates what the limits are – only 400 A in discharge due to heat, for example – but the master controller unit (MCU) is the one responsible for accomplishing those limits,” Huff explained. “If the MCU fails to do that – drawing too much current, for instance – then the battery system controller opens its connectors and disconnects power as a last resort.”

The battery monitoring system (BMS) monitors the cell voltage and temperature (case temperature, terminal temperature and conductor temperature, for instance), manages the cell balancing and communicates data to the BSC.

This monitoring will be further enhanced with the incorporation of Akkurate (a battery analytics company acquired by Sandvik earlier in the year) and its remote battery diagnostic and prognostic platforms into the BHEV business unit, with Rutqvist saying that “embedded” monitoring software on the battery and “remote health monitoring” applications are the first development priorities, post-integration.

Jakob Rutqvist says “embedded” monitoring software on the battery and “remote health monitoring” applications are the first development priorities for Akkurate, post-integration into Sandvik

Such monitoring can go a long way in ensuring safety from within the system, but you cannot always limit external threats, Huff said.

“In terms of electrical failure modes, you can prevent overcharging and over-discharging through monitoring-based functions, but you can’t prevent deformation, mechanical damage or penetration from foreign objects,” he said.

This is where the ‘suppression’ element comes into play.

Sandvik uses a potassium-based, electrically non-conductive chemical emulsion for its fire suppression system. It acts by filling the battery pack interior with an aerosol agent that chemically interrupts combustion and stops a potential fire in its tracks.

“We’ve had a couple of incidents in the past, which were minor, and these suppression systems came in and did the job we prescribed for them,” Huff said. “They are not designed to put out a widespread battery fire, where, instead, the chemistry selection and the other passive controls we have designed in are the safety barriers.”

No expense spared

This three-step safety approach is indicative of the company’s focus on risk reduction for its customers, with Huff saying the company often looks beyond industry standards and regulations when designing features in.

“The volume and value proposition of our products change the battery system design requirements,” he said. “We’re not trying to save a dollar here by reducing the thickness of, say, the enclosure, or amending some design feature for cost effectiveness.

“Safety and reliability are way more important than the cost of manufacturing the system.”

There are plenty of examples of this safety-design-over-cost philosophy on board its battery systems.

For instance, the company has minimised the use of cables, designing as much as possible with busbars to avoid potential electrical shorting. All these busbars are powder coated and protected from an electrical perspective, meaning any “casual” contact from operators or service technicians will not result in the live conductors being engaged.

When it comes to isolation monitoring, the company has also designed in safety precautions.

“Isolation monitoring was originally mandated for battery systems to notify technicians about the potential for an electrical shock if there was an isolation fault,” Huff said.

“Beyond that, it can be used as an early warning for a higher current short circuit where an isolation fault occurs that is lower than a certain resistance.”

Huff and his team have carried out some research and chosen 5,000 ohms as the relevant threshold for this particular risk.

“If you have a 5,000-ohm isolation fault in a location and have a direct connection from another point to the chassis, you can create a short circuit with enough power to melt some of the protective materials in the battery system and potentially accelerate this to a much higher current short circuit,” he said.

This second isolation monitoring consideration requires a differentiated response.

“Shock hazards are a warning situation – you need to notify people there is a hazard and behave differently,” he said.

“You need to handle a short circuit risk – a low impedance isolation fault – differently. For us, it means shutting the machine down and isolating the fault through removing the modules or locating the fault and transferring the modules.”

With Artisan’s battery systems designed to be broken down into individual batteries and transported individually as needed, the company can do exactly this.

“There have been a few battery fires reported in mines over the last five or so years, involving different types of equipment,” Huff said. “The two I know about had nothing to do with a BMS response and everything to do with isolation faults. How you handle a battery with this issue is, therefore, a key consideration.”

Backward-compatible benefits

Huff, a co-founder of Artisan, can contextualise the mining proposition better than most considering his experience in both electrifying the automotive sector and heavy-duty commercial vehicles – two sectors Artisan served prior to shifting focus to underground mining.

“A key difference is the level of serviceability required,” he said. “Mining is a very different world; you are separated so much from a nice clean shop with all the facilities and space to do work. With cars, there is such easy infrastructure in place; mining is not like that.

“At mine sites, there is huge pressure to do the work in-situ with the tools you have in your backpack and, if you don’t have the specific tool, you are typically going to make the tool or do without it. You have to have a product designed for that environment, and that is exactly what we have done.”

Rutqvist said the standardisation and commodification of Sandvik’s battery systems comes at the cell level, which leaves the company open to adapt and customise according to mining industry demands.

“If you take the market at a battery system level, mining customers don’t count in thousands, they count in hundreds,” he said. “Our average customer is big, and they expect to be very close to us when it comes to the product and the product development; our largest customers are very big and expect to have a say in the development and the requirements on the battery system.

“We’re happy to be middlemen for the battery cell, but we don’t want to be middlemen for the battery system design.”

Over the past decade or so – and going forward – this has enabled the company to take advantage of battery technology developments as they happen.

Sandvik says it is able to incorporate new technology and advances into its battery system platform

Haley-Anna Blinn – currently a BEV Applications Specialist at the Sandvik BHEV business unit and previously an Electrical Engineer at the Macassa gold mine in Ontario, Canada, which has one of the biggest battery-electric fleets in the world – has been on the receiving end of this.

“So much is changing in the battery space all the time,” she said. “I have only been involved for five years, and I have seen a lot of change.

“We recognise that, so it is important we design our systems to accommodate future design changes or even battery chemistry improvements when it comes to energy density.

“With the older vintage of equipment, there was a change of cell supplier at one point that resulted in cells with a different form factor.

“While this changed the number of cells in a module based on their characteristics, it was a change that was carried out seamlessly when the cells were due to be refreshed. The module had a similar form factor, so was backward-compatible from a battery system design perspective.”

The new cells also ended up improving performance by about 20% or so, according to Blinn.

With the average battery cell life being 3-5 years, battery performance continuing to improve exponentially over a similar timeframe and the internal funding capabilities of the Sandvik Group, Sandvik BEV customers could be in line for similar step-change improvements in the future.

There are more subtle changes the company can make to its battery systems tailored to the operation at hand, too.

Leveraging sophisticated modelling software and a databank that goes back to the start of Artisan’s BEV journey, technicians can tweak the system at the factory to the conditions they will likely experience underground.

This goes beyond implementing a simple speed restriction to protect the battery system and the operators.

“Some mines might be more conducive to a slower charge than others based on the duty cycle, so we can configure these parameters at the factory,” Blinn explained. “Other mines may impose a temperature limit based on the operating conditions underground that goes beyond the standard limits we program. We can make those changes to ensure the system engages differently during operation.”

Having solved the obvious teething problems that came with introducing BEVs at underground mines over the last decade-or-so, Sandvik is moving into a consolidation phase where refinements to its system design will take place as opposed to major overhauls.

At a time when mining companies require improved performance and uptime from these machines to achieve their own electrification and productivity goals, the company’s mining-focused, safety-conscious battery system design philosophy continues to set it apart.

Dafo Li-IonFire tackles electric/hybrid vehicle fire protection

Dafo Vehicle Fire Protection has helped build a fire protection system tailored for operations using electric or hybrid vehicles as part of an EU-funded program.

In partnership with RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Dafo explored different techniques to detect potential battery failure, as early as possible, and take immediate action to stop, or delay, a potentially hazardous situation.

The partners studied the various fire risks related to batteries, including specific risks when charging, and procedures for handling electric vehicles and batteries after a crash. They also investigated to what extent fixed and integrated fire suppression systems, which are widely used to protect combustion engine compartments on heavy vehicles, can be applied to vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries, and how they should be designed.

“With the rapid introduction of electric and hybrid electric vehicles in public transport, there are new challenges because they present totally different risk scenarios,” Anders Gulliksson of Dafo Vehicle (pictured), Coordinator of the EU-funded Li-IonFire (Automated e-vehicle Lithium Ion Battery Early Warning and Fire Suppression System) project, said.

Through extensive testing, the Li-IonFire team better understood how a breakdown occurs within the battery and how it can be detected.

“If a system is activated at this early stage, the battery can be ‘brought back’ to a safe state, without the fire developing further,” Gulliksson explained.

“The tests have also shown that even with a late deployment of the fire suppression system, there’s a possibility of delaying the battery reaching a critical state, meaning that the chance of safe evacuation is very high.”

With proper detection and system activation, the hazardous scenario can be reversed and potentially even stopped entirely, according to Dafo.

The project team has, it says, successfully validated and demonstrated a highly innovative fire protection system for electric and hybrid electric vehicles. The new system provides an early fire warning system, and spot cooling to prevent thermal runaway while localising and suppressing fire.

The system was officially unveiled in 2019 and has generated tremendous interest from both end users and vehicle manufacturers, according to Dafo.

“Li-IonFire delivers to the market a product that didn’t exist until now; a system that can offer real protection against battery fires, using a new suppression agent, Forrex EV™, which is specifically developed for these applications,” concluded Gulliksson.

“Li-IonFire will significantly boost the safety of operators and the protection of valuable assets.”

It will be available from September 1, 2020, the company says.

iRIS innovation project putting out fires in Sweden mines

Since the launch of the iRIS (Intelligent Risk Identification System for safer mines) innovation project, 5,000-10,000 controls have been distributed to the Swedish market, according to EIT Raw Materials.

The iRIS innovation project started back in 2015 when the GRAMKO (Mining Industry Environment Committee) initiated a meeting following the release of statistics on vehicle-related fires in Swedish mines. The project was further developed and supported by the EIT RawMaterials funding, with the committee represented in the innovation project by the mines of Boliden, LKAB, Björkdalsgruvan and Zinkgruvan.

EIT Raw Materials, which helped fund the official launch of iRIS in Sweden, in January, said: “The goal of the innovation project iRIS is to decrease the number of vehicle-related fires in the mining industry by 20% within the first five-year period. The iRIS inspection tool and the database will be open for use in other fields as well. In order to make it easier to evaluate the future effect of implementing the iRIS system, evaluation indicators are currently under development.”

EIT RawMaterials says the project has since developed educational material for both educators of inspectors and vehicle fire inspectors, with the project team currently working on a certification system to be introduced later this year.

The estimated cost for fires in Swedish mines is €2 million/y ($2.2 million/y), most of which start in vehicles, according to EIT. “Initial studies show similar problems in other countries. Hence, this is a tremendous potential market expansion and commercialisation for a system like iRIS.”

Currently, there are three other potential markets that could benefit from the iRIS intelligent system, such as construction equipment, bus and insurance sectors, EIT said.

The system will now be licensed to create business opportunities for the project partners, with SMEs being sub-suppliers for the mining industry. This should lead to “a safer, more sustainable and more cost-effective mine”, EIT said.

From a national perspective, the iRIS system will include mandatory use of the inspection and reporting tools for necessary information, in the case of fires within the GRAMKO jurisdiction in Sweden.

The team is now moving on to an innovation project FIREM-II (Fire and Rescue in Mines II), which focuses on a combination of wearable technology and wheel loaders aiming to put out fires in underground mines, it said.

The members of the iRIS innovation project consortium includes:

  • RISE Research Institutes of Sweden AB, Sweden (Lead Partner);
  • Agio System och Kompetens AB, Sweden;
  • Aptum AB, Sweden;
  • Björkdalsgruvan AB (Mandalay Resources), Sweden;
  • Boliden Mineral AB, Sweden;
  • DMT GmbH & Co. KG, Germany;
  • Luleå University of Technology (LTU), Sweden;
  • Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara AB (LKAB), Sweden;
  • RISE Research Institutes of Sweden Holding AB, Sweden;
  • SMP Svensk Maskinprovning AB, Sweden;
  • Zinkgruvan Mining AB (Lundin Mining Corporation), Sweden.

Dafo Vehicle fired up by Australia mobile equipment certification

Dafo Vehicle Fire Protection has made significant progress in its attempts to break into the Australia mobile equipment market with its SV-K fire suppression system after being awarded the AS 5062 certification by regulators in the country.

The company said it has fulfilled the requirements of the Australian Standard AS 5062:2016 – Fire protection for mobile and transportable equipment for the system and it has been granted with a Certificate of Approval by the Certification Body Global-Mark.

At this stage, the certificate has been issued under the name of Dafo Vehicle Fire Protection’s Australian partner, BFI Fire Pty Ltd/Dafo Australia.

Dafo has sold more than 100,000 fire suppression systems to manufacturers such as Volvo, Atlas Copco, Caterpillar, Scania, Sandvik, Komatsu, MAN, John Deere and Ponsse, but has so far struggled to break into the Australia mobile equipment sector.

Holger Pfriem, Business Manager, Asia and Australasia, Dafo Vehicle Fire Protection AB, said: “This is a big step for us to make more impact on the Australian Heavy-Duty Mobile Equipment market mainly within the areas of mining, cargo, construction, forestry, waste and agricultural handling equipment in a broader and more comprehensive perspective.”

David Thurn, Managing Director of Dafo Australia, meanwhile, said the company was confident the AS 5062 certification will facilitate the expansion of its business in Australia. “As a second step we will soon launch a fluorine-free agent,” he added.