A national disaster level of inconvenience continues due to system paralysis caused by lithium-ion battery fires. For example, the fire at the data center in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province, which caused the KakaoTalk outage in October 2020, and the recent fire accident at the National Information Resources Service also started from lithium-ion batteries. Once ignited, lithium-ion batteries cause thermal runaway, leading to large-scale fires. Due to the structure of the battery pack surrounding the cells, initial fire suppression is difficult. This is why lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles, energy storage systems (ESS), and data centers are referred to as time bombs. To break the vicious cycle of national disasters triggered by battery fires, voices are calling for new technologies rather than existing fire suppression methods.
The Vicious Cycle of National Disasters Triggered by Lithium-Ion Batteries

On October 15, 2022, an incident occurred that halted the daily lives of the entire nation. It was a fire that started from a lithium-ion battery located in the basement of the SK C&C Pangyo Campus data center in Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi Province. This accident paralyzed services such as KakaoTalk, KakaoT, KakaoPay, and the Daum portal. Particularly, as of August 2025, KakaoTalk, with approximately 48.19 million monthly active users, serves as the primary messenger for most citizens, leading to evaluations that the daily life of the nation came to a halt when the service was disrupted.
According to SK C&C, alarms sounded immediately after the fire, and firefighting facilities such as sprinklers operated normally. The problem is that due to the nature of lithium-ion battery fires, it is difficult to suppress them with just regular extinguishers or sprinklers.

This is not the first such fire. In 2014, a fire occurred at the Samsung SDS data center in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province. The fire, which climbed the outer wall of the data center building and reached the rooftop, damaged the cooling tower, leading to server overheating. As a result, services such as Samsung Card payment notification, Samsung Life Insurance, and Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance websites were partially suspended.

Despite the ongoing inconvenience to the public due to data center fires, solutions have not been derived, and similar damage cases have continued to occur recently.
On September 26, 2025, a fire occurred in the computer room on the 5th floor of the National Information Resources Service headquarters in Yuseong-gu, Daejeon. The fire, which started with the explosion of a lithium battery in the uninterruptible power supply room, caused a large-scale shutdown of government servers. A total of 647 government work systems, including public digital services such as Government24, mobile ID, the National Petition System, and Onnara, were paralyzed.
The Structure of Lithium-Ion Batteries Makes Fire Suppression Difficult with Existing Methods

Why do disaster situations triggered by lithium-ion batteries repeat in similar forms? The structure of the lithium-ion battery pack is cited as a cause. Lithium-ion batteries have a structure where multiple cells are bundled into modules and wrapped in a pack. It is difficult for water to penetrate inside the cells from the outside, making early suppression difficult in case of a fire.
Even during the data center fire mentioned earlier, the fire authorities responded immediately, but it was difficult to directly release extinguishing agents into the cells causing thermal runaway. Meanwhile, the fire spread sequentially to adjacent cells, leading to a failure in early suppression. The same principle applies to electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries, where early suppression is difficult when a fire occurs. As analyses suggest that current suppression methods are inadequate for lithium-ion battery fires, new technologies such as immersion tank methods that submerge the battery pack in a water tank and alternative extinguishing agents that suppress electrolyte reactions are mentioned as alternatives. However, immersion tanks have the limitation of being difficult for early suppression, and alternative extinguishing agents also reveal a fundamental limitation of not being able to reach the cells directly and quickly.

Amidst this, a company that devised a next-generation battery fire-specific extinguishing system with a structure that covers the entire battery cell with a fire-responsive capsule is gaining attention.

Development of Next-Generation Battery Fire-Specific Extinguishing System Based on Fire-Responsive Polymer 'FireKimES'

FireKimES is a company that has independently developed an automatic extinguishing system that releases more than 90% of extinguishing agents immediately upon fire occurrence to aid in early suppression. The company introduced a stick-type automatic extinguisher made from fire-responsive polymer material and obtained disaster safety product certification from the Ministry of the Interior and Safety.
The fire-responsive polymer material applied to the automatic extinguisher stick operates on the principle of automatically detecting temperature and releasing internal extinguishing agents in spaces where the internal temperature rises to 100-110 degrees. It spreads the extinguishing agent throughout the protected area, displacing the air in the space and conducting asphyxiation extinguishing by removing heat and cooling extinguishing by lowering the ignition point temperature simultaneously. Being a fire-responsive polymer, it does not require separate power or sensors, allowing it to operate even in power outage situations. By using clean extinguishing agents, it suppresses fires without secondary damage, enabling quick functional recovery after extinguishing fires in sensitive electronic facilities such as data centers and distribution panels.
FireKimES is pursuing commercialization next year by devising a next-generation battery fire-specific extinguishing system based on this proprietary technology. The system has a structure that covers the entire cell inside the battery pack with a fire-responsive capsule. It is considered a technology that overcomes the limitations of existing fire suppression methods that sprayed water from outside the battery pack. It can enable early suppression of data center or electric vehicle fires triggered by battery fires, as it reacts immediately at high temperatures without power or sensors, even in power outage situations.
Kim Byung-yeol, CEO of FireKimES, stated, "We are continuously conducting research and development and testing to enhance the completeness of the battery fire-specific extinguishing system, and we plan to launch the product on the market by the first half of 2026. Many companies, including North America's largest electric vehicle manufacturer and Korea's largest automobile manufacturer, are showing interest in the battery fire-specific extinguishing system," adding, "We are also undergoing procedures for the notoriously stringent U.S. UL certification and European CE certification. Based on the philosophy of creating life-saving products, we aim to promote the excellence of Korean firefighting technology and grow into a unicorn company."

IT Donga Reporter Kim Dong-jin (kdj@itdonga.com)

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