Lithium Ion Battery Thermal Runaway Gas Detection with Gasmet GT5000 Terra

Excerpt from a Webinar Recorded Wednesday, November 5, 2025 at Lesman Instrument Company 

In 2023, a municipal worker in Southern California was injured when he was exposed to hydrogen fluoride from a fire during lithium-ion battery disposal. To prevent such injuries in the future, the county facilities team needed to evaluate and better define precautions workers dealing with battery disposal should be taking. But there wasn’t a lot of public information.

The county facilities team set up experimental conditions to study the releases from an EV fire. They built a test environment in a remote area, brought in about 20 combinations of battery formulation, size, and casings, and monitored the toxic gas emissions released during an event.

In three days of thermal runaway tests, the Gasmet FTIR was able to measure and identify spikes in gases that exceeded the recommended short-term exposure limits (STELs), including hydrogen fluoride, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, formaldehyde, and benzene.

The Gasmet FTIR monitor identified these toxic gas spikes so the risk management team could set rules for personal protective equipment where there’s a chance of toxic gas exposure.

This is only one example of how Gasmet can help when you need to measure sub-ppm levels of known and unknown gases, identify unknown odors and gases, and quantify known compounds. Watch the full webinar recording to find out.