Use of adiabatic calorimetry to characterise thermal runaway of Li-ion cells is a crucial technique in battery safety testing. Various states of charge (SoC) of Li-ion cells were investigated to ascertain their thermal runaway features using a Vent Sizing Package 2 (VSP2) adiabatic calorimeter. To evaluate the thermal runaway characteristics, the temperature-pressure-time trajectories of commercial cylindrical cells were tested, and it was found that cells at a SoC of greater than 50% were subject to thermal explosion at elevated temperatures. Calorimetry data from various 18650 Li-ion cells with different SoC were used to calculate the thermal explosion energies and chemical kinetics; furthermore, a novel self heating model based on a pseudo-zero-order reaction that follows the Arrhenius equation was found to be applicable for studying the exothermic reaction of a charged cell. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.