KULR Technology Successfully Completes 200 Amp-Hour Battery Fractional Thermal Runaway Calorimetry Test for EV Customer

SAN DIEGO, May 07, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- KULR Technology Group, Inc. (NYSE American: KULR) (the "Company" or "KULR"), "), a global leader in safe and high-performance energy storage solutions, today announced the Company has successfully completed large format fractional thermal runaway calorimeter (“L-FTRC”) tests for 200 Amp-hour (Ah) high energy Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) prismatic format lithium-ion cells for its global automotive OEM customer. As the exclusive licensee of the L-FTRC technology from NASA, KULR is uniquely positioned to service customers in electric vehicles, grid energy storage and industrial applications with L-FTRC testing of their batteries in the global cell testing market estimated to reach USD $7 billion by 2030. Just last year, a leading global automaker selected KULR for its next-generation EV battery safety and testing solutions. Recently, EV automakers have been exploring high-performance silicon-anode batteries and other technologies to enhance driving range and reduce costs in future electric vehicles.

The S-FTRC, a NASA Invention of the Year Award Winner, was expanded in 2018 to accommodate large format cells (L-FTRC). This technology was eventually licensed by KULR Technology Corporation on an exclusive basis in 2023. With this technique, KULR can characterize total energy yield, fractional energy yield, and mass ejection distributions for the largest of lithium-ion cell formats available (both from a dimension standpoint and with respect to capacity). This arrangement also allows KULR to extract and submit gas samples for third party gas speciation analysis.

William Walker, KULR CTO, stated, “Thermal runaway testing in general is a challenge where numerous variables and their impacts must be considered. Ultimately, we are characterizing very violent events. If the objective is closed, or semi-closed, in format testing the larger the cell -- the more difficult the test.” Walker continued, “When a lithium-ion cell goes into thermal runaway, we have immense amount of heat and gas released, with estimates of gas generation to be on the order of 3 liters per Ah. For 200 Ah cell, this means we must be prepared to deal with up to 600 liters of hot, toxic, and corrosive gases that are released in as little as 3-5 seconds. The KULR engineering team’s modifications to the NASA developed technology allowed us to successfully facilitate, instrument, and characterize the thermal runaway event of a NMC based 200 Ah cell for one of our customers.”