disconnecting the batteries doesn’t help.
Apologies, it’s the ICE cars that have the battery disconnected.
Discharging or part charging the batteries makes no difference to the intensity with which they burn
I did not know that! Ta.
GCaptain are reporting that the ship is still drifting and the fire is now spreading downward towards the fuel stores and engines. A specialist firefighting team is apparently on the way.
No need to apologise! Every day is a school day, and my school day with lithium batteries was about 10 years ago when we had a fairly substantial fire at work caused by a few dozen coin cells.
I was the Health and safety manager...
We all learnt quite a lot about lithium fires that day. Especially the night shift supervisor who tried to put out the fire with a water extinguisher 😂
A report today indicates that the fire is now diminishing, basically because there’s very little left to burn!
I would imagine that there’s a bunch of insurance underwriters walking around in tight little circles talking to themselves!
RRro car carriers like this have the vehicle decks protected with water sprinkler systems normally.
CO2 is virtually useless as the spaces are too big, and very difficult to seal up.
For CO2 you hit the space and.... wait... wait and wait. It takes hours, if not days for the fire to cool enough to enter the space again.
That said, lithium battery fires can't be extinguished with CO2 or water. You need graphite low pressure extinguishers, but these are too small for putting out something the size of a car power cell.
Fire brigades are now using huge fire blanket, common on ferries, but I doubt they'd be useful with the number of cars on a Car Carrier.
Bridgehead fire blanket
There were $401Mn worth of German cars on that vessel
Fire brigades are now using huge fire blanket
Loving that fireblanket.
Quick, easy, effective and reusable.
Discharging or part charging the batteries makes no difference to the intensity with which they burn, unlike emptying the tank of an ICE vehicle. Likewise disconnecting the batteries doesn’t help.
Yeah, we've had quite a few incidents over the years, even an effectively flat battery might still contain 15-20% of the total energy that the battery is capable of carrying, depending on chemistry and battery management strategy.
The quoted capacity, e.g. 80kWh is only the extractable energy, the total energy might be in the 100kWh range. Added to that, the actual material of the battery cells themselves is extremely flammable and over discharging is (almost) as high risk as over charging/overheating for damaging the battery.
Once it starts burning different chemistry happens. I imagine that even the Li in its discharged state (lithium cobalt oxide according to Wikipedia) will oxidise further to lithium oxide, releasing more energy. Plus all the other stuff burning such as the carbon electrodes.
Discharging or part charging the batteries makes no difference to the intensity with which they burn
I did not know that! Ta.
I rather like the idea of electricity being flammable 😀
Once it's in thermal runaway, a lithium ion battery produces the oxygen needed to self-sustain the fire. CO2 can't do much to stop that
I read this the other week, it's an interesting explanation of electric car fire issues:
Autocar - How much of a fire risk are electric vehicles?
I rather like the idea of electricity being flammable
😅So do I! I think my thinking was in terms of energy stored rather then electricity being flammable. Funnily enough I have a basic understanding of thermal runaway so should really understand what’s happening with a battery fire but uhm… clearly not.
The Autocar article is informative. Raw
Ultimately I suppose you'd want gas detection, thermal imaging and a way of keeping the vehicle cool while the battery pack burns.
Maybe in the future the batteries will be shipped separately.
Or the cars have their own fire detection with a water hook up/somewhere to aim a hose to constantly cool the battery pack with a ceramic housing and try to stop the fire spreading to the rest of the vehicle/surroundings.
, and my school day with lithium batteries was about 10 years ago when we had a fairly substantial fire at work caused by a few dozen coin cells.
I’ve always wondered about this. The number of old coin cells, and devices like mobile phones I have lying around my house and garage is fairly large. And that’s before we even get on to things like bike lights etc. Should they all be considered a a fire hazard?
Should they all be considered a a fire hazard?
E scooters and derivations are banned from carriage on the London Underground, presumably as a fire risk rather than just because they are used by tossers.
Once it’s in thermal runaway, a lithium ion battery produces the oxygen needed to self-sustain the fire.
That’s interesting, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that mentioned in articles I’ve read about Li-ion battery fires, explains a lot.
Maybe in the future the batteries will be shipped separately.
I mentioned that as a joke - it’s not feasible in cars, especially ones like Teslas, particularly the latest Y-model; the entire chassis is a block of alloy with a honeycomb of holes, into which the individual cells are placed, and then thin metal connectors are fixed in place on top of the cells. The cells used to be 18650’s, because of their energy density, but Tesla have developed a new type, called something like 4258 or something, it relates to the height and diameter of the individual cell. Huge castings are then bolted to the ends which carry the drivetrain.
Volvo are going to do the same, the castings are the largest injection-mouldings ever made, I believe the machines used to make them weigh something like 6000 tonnes.
The number of old coin cells, and devices like mobile phones I have lying around my house and garage is fairly large.
Most coin cells are alkaline, there are lithium versions of some I think.
The phone batteries have an anti-short device (a fuse, I guess) that means they can't self discharge and overheat if shorted. However if the battery is damaged some other way e.g. punctured then it could burn I suppose.
Well, it appears to be a total loss, then!
