Moments ago, KULR announced that the Company has commenced work on helping establish updated industry safety standards for lithium battery packaging used to ship batteries commercially. In April 2020, the Company announced a partnership with Hazmat Safety Consulting (“Hazmat”), an organization with over 60 years of combined experience in developing, influencing, and interpreting lithium battery safety regulations for the safe transport of lithium batteries.
This week, KULR is participating in meetings of the United Nations Transport of Dangerous Goods Sub-Committee Informal Working Group to establish test methods and criteria by which lithium batteries can be more effectively regulated based on their inherent hazards. On September 15, 2020, the Company will present to a subcommittee of the Transportation Research Board on the Prevention of Thermal Runaway Propagation in Lithium Batteries. KULR’s passive propagation resistant (PPR) design solutions prevent dangerous cell-to-cell thermal runaway propagation. KULR’s PPR solutions were recently adopted by NASA for use in future space missions.
Lithium battery fires — such as the incidents that destroyed a UPS plane in 2010 and a FedEx truck in 2016– have increasingly become a public safety concern. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has called for stricter testing and shipping standards for lithium batteries and submitted safety recommendations to the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), a division of the Department of Transportation responsible for developing, issuing, and enforcing safety regulations for the transport of hazardous materials, in May 2020.
“Bob Richard, President of Hazmat, who formerly served as the Deputy Associate Administrator for the PHMSA and Chairman of the UN Sub-Committee of Experts on the Transport of Dangerous Goods, will be instrumental in guiding us through the steps required to implement minimum packaging standards required to ship lithium batteries,” said Michael Mo, CEO of KULR. “Our PPR technologies are world-class solutions for preventing dangerous battery fires, and we share the NTSB’s, concerns about current safety standards. Requiring that lithium batteries be shipped in packaging capable of preventing thermal runaway propagation makes logical sense and should be taken into serious consideration by the PHMSA.”
According to Verified Market Research, the global lithium ion battery market was valued at $36.35 Billion in 2019 and is projected to reach $115.98 Billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 15.6% from 2020 to 2027.
Last year, NASA used the Company’s PPR technology to safely transport to and store lithium batteries aboard the International Space Station as well as collaborated with KULR on NASA’s high-voltage battery safety guide. Earlier this year, KULR licensed its technologies to Americase, which provides the world’s most widely used return packaging solution for damaged, defective, or recalled batteries.
KULR Technology Group to Participate in United Nations Working Group on Lithium Battery Classification