Honeywell has acquired the Li-ion Tamer business from Ohio-based Nexceris to bolster fire detection technologies in its building automation portfolio.

The acquisition should enhance Honeywell’s fire life safety portfolio and support high growth energy storage and data centre sectors.

Li-ion Tamer’s technology provides early detection of thermal runaway to help prevent lithium-ion battery fires. With more than 30 global patents across its product lines, Li-ion Tamer is trusted by battery OEMs around the world.

The acquisition follows a partnership with Nexceris (nexceris.com) over the past five years to address Li-ion battery system safety. The transaction is expected to be immediately accretive to Honeywell’s financials.

With demand for Li-ion batteries expected to grow by over 30% annually until 2030 to greater than $400bn, battery safety products are increasingly critical for sectors ranging from renewable energy to cloud computing. Safe monitoring and early detection enable essential steps to avoid or reduce the effects of thermal runaway; without these, an entire system can be lost once a fire begins in an energy storage system.

By using early warning technology to detect battery off-gassing, which typically precedes thermal runaway, Li-ion Tamer provides facilities with vital time to intervene before a battery fire starts. With its detection technology that provides a warning up to 30 minutes in advance, Li-ion Tamer is used by battery OEMs worldwide.

“As lithium-ion battery use grows rapidly across data centres, EV infrastructure and grid-scale energy storage, the risk of fire is increasing in parallel,” said Billal Hammoud, CEO of Honeywell’s building automation segment. “Li-ion Tamer’s early warning technology has been revolutionary for our customers and partners over the last five years. Building on our legacy partnership, the acquisition of this product suite will position Honeywell as a leader in early gas detection and battery fire prevention. We expect this tuck-in acquisition to further bolster growth of our fire detection business.”

The Li-ion Tamer (liiontamer.com) product portfolio, which includes more than 30 global patents, will be integrated into Honeywell’s building automation business, enabling Honeywell to offer a suite of fire detection products that complement its existing smoke detection technology and life safety offerings. Currently, this includes Vesda that detects the earlier signs of a potential fire and connected life safety services, hosted on the Honeywell Forge IoT platform, that uses data to deliver the connectivity and intelligence needed for secure, compliant and more efficient fire system management.

This acquisition follows Honeywell’s announcement of the planned spin-offs of its aerospace technologies and Solstice materials businesses. Since December 2023, Honeywell (www.honeywell.com) has announced a number of actions to drive organic growth and simplify its portfolio, including $13.5bn of accretive acquisitions.