Fike Announces Partnership with Dubai’s Heriot-Watt University for Energy Storage Safety Curriculum
BLUE SPRINGS, Missouri | May 2024: Fike Corporation, a global manufacturer and supplier of industrial hazard protection, has announced a partnership with Heriot-Watt University to both protect its rooftop energy storage system from lithium battery fires and to add program curriculum around this lithium ion battery fire suppression and thermal management system, Fike Blue.
Dubai’s largest international university, Heriot-Watt University possesses a Solar Innovation Lab which is powered by a combination of rooftop solar panels and a battery energy storage system (BESS). Zafar Siddiqui, MEIA Technology & Solutions Consultant at Fike, recently met with university leaders to educate them about the ever-present fire hazard within a BESS called “thermal runaway,” which was once believed to have no reliable means of protection.
In 2023 Fike launched the first third-party tested and patented solution to suppress cascading thermal runaway, Fike Blue. Heriot-Watt University’s BESS will soon be the first system protected by Fike Blue in North Africa and the Middle East.
With the installation of Fike Blue on-site at the university, this led to a unique educational opportunity. Heriot-Watt will also be the first university in the region to have lectures and engineering curriculum on the science behind thermal runaway in BESS’s and EV charging stations, and industry best practices in managing these potential hazards.
Furthermore, in the 2024 Fall Semester, Heriot-Watt University will announce a special opportunity for a doctoral or masters student to participate in testing, write a test report and produce a thesis around thermal runaway management which will be published in a future journal.
“Engineering students at Heriot-Watt University will soon have an opportunity to learn something completely new that’s not taught in any other university,” said Siddiqui. “The combination of studying thermal runaway in BESS’s and the effect of Fike Blue on the fire hazard is a subject that we are excited to help train future engineers about.”
Siddiqui said this educational opportunity is an example of the importance of increased attention placed on energy storage safety.
“With the increasing proliferation of renewable energy and battery energy storage system installations around the world, now is the time to make the future leaders in this industry aware of the thermal runaway problem, and there is now a reliable protection method of suppressing cascading thermal runaways which has been proven to work time and time again,” said Siddiqui.
About Fike: Fike manufactures industrial safety products that protect people and organizations from pressure-related explosions, combustible dust explosions, industrial fire hazards and lithium battery thermal management problems. Using internal product development, scientific research and testing and validation capabilities, Fike develops application-specific solutions consistent with or exceeding the world’s standards and regulations.
About Heriot-Watt University: Heriot-Watt University Dubai Campus is a satellite campus of Heriot-Watt University, UK. Established in 2005, it was the first campus of an overseas university to open in Dubai. In April 2019, Heriot-Watt’s Dubai campus was crowned ‘Best University’ in the Middle East at the first ever Forbes Middle East Higher Education Awards. The campus received a five-star rating for three consecutive years in 2019, 2020 and 2021 from the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), the supreme educational quality assurance and regulatory authority of the Government of Dubai.