Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A few weeks ago I asked a fire fighter friend how they extinguish electric vehicle battery fires.
He said “Oh you mean like a Tesla or something? The answer is you can’t. You cordon off the area, and spray a fine mist of water on the fire to try to keep the temperature down until it finishes burning. Takes a few days until it is safe”.
The problem is, besides being highly flammable, lithium is literally the lightest metal. At atomic number 3, it is the first element in the periodic table which is a solid. The two previous elements, hydrogen and helium, are both gasses.
Lithium is so light, it floats on water (lithium density 0.543, half the density of water). Lithium is entirely happy to blaze away while sitting on the surface of a puddle of water.
So if you try to smother a lithium fire with sand, the sand sinks to the bottom, and the lithium floats on top.
Lithium melts at 180C / 356F, and burns at 2000C / 3632F – almost more than hot enough to melt steel, more than hot enough to destroy most composites and metals like aluminium.
The fumes from a burning lithium fire are highly toxic, capable of causing death or long term dementia like brain injuries – so you need to keep members of the public at a safe distance. Fire fighters need to wear respirators if they approach the flame.
There are chemical extinguishers, but my fire station friend didn’t seem to think much of them, at least not for large lithium fires.
I guess you might be able to smother a large lithium fire by dropping a Chernobyl style sarcophagus made of steel on top of it, or possibly made of some other material which could handle the heat. Then you could fill the sarcophagus with an inert gas like Argon, or just wait for the oxygen to run out. But equipping fire departments with a sarcophagus device large enough to smother an EV fire, and the equipment required to deploy it, would be an expensive exercise.
What does your fire department do when they have to extinguish a large lithium fire? I’d love to know, so I can tell Australian fire departments. Cordon off the area and spray a mist of water at the fire for a few days would be a serious inconvenience or worse, if the burning vehicle was say blocking an important road junction, on the high street, or in someone’s residential or workplace garage or workshop.
Correction (EW): h/t Gordon A. Dressler – steel melts around 1500C, so a lithium fire burning at 2000C is hot enough to melt steel.
What does your fire department do
Seemingly nothing other than laud the use of EVs.
The London Fire Brigade is fully on board.
London fire brigade, battery BMW chiefs car.
London fire brigade, battery BMW chiefs car. (firepics.net)
Now the “spontaneous combustion” of an EV fire truck or Fire Chief’s vehicle, along with the entire fire house, due to their inability to put out the fire, would be a fitting way to show the sheer stupidity of EV fire vehicles.
Maybe another “skit” would be a woman watching her house burn to the ground because the fire truck battery went dead on the way over.
How about the battery running out in the middle of pumping the water to put the fire out?
How about the battery catching fire in the middle of trying to put out a fire?
Class D extinguishers can help. Obviously, only for small fires. Problem is you have to watch out for reactivity.
There is a lot of discussion about this on various firefighter forums and websites. The general consensus is that there is a lot more training needed.
The problem with water and a metal like lithium is the chemical reaction. I haven’t dealt with lithium but I’ve had several magnesium fires – we have to use foam (there’s an agent that we mix with water in the pump) to get those under control, and also have to watch out to ensure the reaction doesn’t spark something nearby in the process. I would assume a similar approach would be the most likely approach for lithium.
A couple articles about it
https://www.firerescue1.com/fire-products/education/articles/what-is-a-fire-triangle-4HSY7X5xagWZR5KQ/
https://www.firerescue1.com/vehicle-fire/articles/ntsb-first-responders-need-more-guidance-on-vehicle-battery-fire-risks-4RIOOu6RogmU6qXr/
For more, hit “search” on that site and enter “lithium”. It’s definitely a concern, and it’s a growing one.
Let me add one more link
https://www.firerescue1.com/electric-fire/articles/ntsb-us-fire-service-not-prepared-to-fight-electric-vehicle-fires-EvBZIyP7EA78muwc/
“Survey reveals one-third of departments don’t train on EV fires, half don’t have SOGs for them” – so half of US fire departments don’t have any guidance on what to do when they encounter this. I can say from experience that rural volunteer departments are even less prepared than the average.
We are lucky where I live, three refineries/chem processing plants in the valley and most of the firemen here work in the plants, or did in past. Lot of training for various materials and situations. Plus several are AF and Navy vets who specialized in firefighting and damage control. We will give it the old school try, at least.
Lithium battery fire has three main components:
Image attached from Denmark where they use special containers to dump the burning ”teslas”.
By the looks of it, that car is a BMW. Almost completely submerged in a dumpster full of water.
That BMW cost how much?
And it is now worth?????
So much for Virtue Signaling.
Virtue.
Signaled.
while Li Ion can be pretty energetic… the other larger concern is where do you cut without causing a large discharge from cutting the wrong electrical lines. it becomes problematic to extract victims when you have to determine which car and where to cut. There is limited standardization where they run the high voltage lines. A nice thing is that battery packs being so bulky are usually in a limited number of locations. https://www.firehouse.com/rescue/vehicle-extrication/article/12383749/university-of-extrication-electric-plugin-vehicle-stabilization-part-1-firefighter-training
I mentioned this in response to Eric on another article – yes, extrication with EVs is a horror to deal with. Standard practices like cutting the posts to roll back the roof can be very dangerous for the reasons you mention, and it’s practically impossible to go through the bottom of the car if you had to. For firefighters, EVs are an absolute nightmare in every possible way.
You just have to remove the O2. They have sprays that do that. Smother the car in that stuff and it should go out.
You are assuming that it is just something burnin, like a log in your fireplace.
There are other chemical reactions which produce lots of heat without oxidation, or cause secondary reactions to disassociate oxygen from other materials (such as water).
Would you please tell me where we’re going to put that “spray” so that we have it when we roll up on an EV fire? In sufficient quantities to “smother” it?
And as Philip notes, with these sort of substances it’s not quite that simple. You’re thinking in terms of the fire triangle, but it’s a fire tetrahedron – you have to include chemical reactions.
Not true. See Philip Mulholland’s comment above.
When you consider all the Li-Ion batteries in use throughout the world today the number of fires is minimal (but with a lot of press coverage). Phones, vaporizers, laptops, tools, toys, drones, robots, vehicles, and on and on. But also considering how many Li-Ion batteries go into to a vehicle battery pack the proliferation of those batteries will be geometric. A solution to Li-Ion fires is needed.
Perhaps I missed it in above comments, but will Li batters in a Tesla catch fire in a garage from a house fire. The above discussion seems to be about the fire starting at the batters not about a fire starting external to the car.
The answer is YES.
Heat up a Lithium battery and it absolutely will cook off and start burning on its own.
Good point. And we go in there with our hoses not knowing it’s an EV we end up making things worse…
We have a Yahoo nearby that zaps up an down the River Thames on his electric hydrosurfer. It is a magic piece of kit – a surfboard with a mtor, pro[pellor and hydrofopil under water When it is up on teh plane it zaps along at 30 miles an hour carving turns like a skier. The speed limit is 3 knots .
. He is a nice bloke and we pass the time of day when I am in my kayak or dinghy and as long as there is only one of him its OK but heaven save the other river users if it becomes mainstream. Anyway a couple of weeks ago he was charging his battery when teh whole lot went up and took out his houseboat and for good measure the adjacent one
How do you Extinguish a Lithium Battery Fire?
With great difficulty.
Max P
You could say the same about policy fires–you can try and throw cold water on it.
If it’s hot enough it will continue to burn and you have to let it burn itself out at your expense. You may also have to detour your life and job around the fire. And when they tell you that you need to learn to code, then you will know you are toast.
The answer you are looking for is F500 Encapsulator Agent manufactured and supplied by Hazard Control Technologies, Inc. This statement can be backed up with 10 years of documented fire suppression testing on Lithium Ion Battery. In addition to the F500 Encapsulation Agent we provide complete Lithium Ion Battery fire suppression. Solution including Fire Extinguishers, Mobile Carts, Quick Attack Mobile Unit as well as multiple fixed sprinkler installation with major companies such as Tesla, GM, Jaguar, BMW, Bosch, Element, Panasonic, etc.
F500 Encapsulator Agent – Looks promising. How is it delivered to the fire source? How much would it take to stop and EV runaway fire?
First, F500EA is not a foam. F500EA is an Encapsulator Agent. Two totally different technologies. At the request of Tesla Europe, HCT Europe in conjunction with Johnson Controls (largest single fire protection supplier in the world, largest Foam manufacturer in the world, own Tyco, Ansul, Chemguard, Williams Fire & Hazard Control) performed fire extinguisher certification testing on Lithium Ion Battery (LIB). Dry Powder Fire Extinguisher, Foam Fire Extinguisher, and F500EA (Encapsulator Technology) Fire ExtinguIsher were test in LIB. Testing was conducted by Kiwa in the Netherland (Test facility was dictated by Tesla Europe). The results were documented is a report. Fire extinguisher testing was videoed. Below is a link to the video of side by side of Dry Powder, Foam, and F500EA fire extinguisher.(you will need to copy and paste the URL into your browser)
After this testing, Johnson Control teamed up with Hazard Control Technologies to create EN3 listed fire extinguishers to bring to both parties Lithium Ion Battery clients. In addition both companies have continued joint effort to run additional University level, highly instrumented & documented LIB fire fire extinguishment utilizing F500EA. The latest test is discussed below.
F500EA concentrate is proportioned into water at 3%. F500EA is readily sold to fire department as the next generation of fire suppression (fluorine free replacement to foam with much more versatile applications. It is proportioned into the fire hose stream using standard fire equipment such as inline educators round the pump proportioned, etc. F500EA is also provided in stand alone systems such fire extinguisher, mobile carts, quick attack mobile units (QAMU) as well as proportioned into fixed sprinkler systems such as bladder tanks, water driven proportioners. In the latest highly documented University testing conducted in Germany F500EA solution extinguished the Lithium Ion Batter using misting type nozzle with only 4 @ur momisugly 5 sec bursts of agent application. First 5 second burst took temp from 1400 C to 400 C and knocked down 95% of flame. There was a wait of 30 seconds prior to second 5 sec burst. During that time no new flame was created. After the second 5 sec burst all flame was gone and the temp went from 400 C down to 80 C. Then there was a 3 minute wait to the third 5 second burst. No new flame, no increase in temp. After 3rd burst temp from 80 C to 40 C In addition the test documented the Encapsulation of Highly toxic HF off gas and flammable electrolyte. How F500EA stops LIB thermal run away is through two mechanisms; 1) Encapsulation of flammable electrolytes within Encapsulator Agent Spherical Micelle (chemical/molecular separation of the fuel from the oxygen as opposed to foam which is a mechanical/macro separation of fuel from the oxygen). 2) couple with the rapid and Perten ant heat reduction. Get rid of the heat … get rid of the fire … get rid of thermal runaway.
Impressive. I’m surprised this isn’t better known and should be readily available at suspect locations (like airports) and on fire trucks.
Hieve the whole car into a container filled with water and transport it to a waste place.
There, wait until it burns through. A week or so.
After that, it becomes a toxic waste.
Tesla has to handle it finally.
Shoot to Mars?
Add to the mix, hybrid vehicles.
Park it in Al Gore’s garage and wait till it stops burning?
Seems only fair to let the Climate Fascists suffer the fallout from their agenda.
Steel melts under 2,800F.
Call it a fusion power experiment and get a grant for it.
I’m not sure why your local fire chief doesn’t think much of chemical extinguishers because they work exactly like your proposed sarcophagus. It just takes kind of a lot of chemical foam. As in, you need a dedicated foam truck, not just a hand-held extinguisher jammed in a spare corner of your regular fire truck. Airports have used foam trucks for decades.
While you shouldn’t go swimming in the foam for fun, it’s no worse than many other industrial chemicals that we use safely all the time.
nuke it from orbit … its the only way to be sure …
Game over, man, game over!
ROFL 🙂
I posted this WUWT article as a concern on an RV manufacturers’s owner’s blog (T@B Teardrop Trailers) I belong to, that as with WUWT. has fairly objective and polite responses. One of the comments referenced this article on the newer Lithium Iron (LiFePO4) batteries that are supposed to be cheaper and safer.
https://www.newcastlesys.com/blog/lithium-ion-vs-lithium-iron-batteries
Anyone on WUWT have comments and/or experience?
Fergie
Yes I have tested lithiu iron phosphate (LFP) for some years. Eric has a fair point but he messed up on the physics – no metalic lithium. LFP has highest thermal runaway temperature and lowest energy release if it does happen. I’ve never seen a battery fire and don’t expect to
most lithium battery fires start when the battery cell case is mahanically damaged. This cases a short circuit in the battery. The heat breaks down other components of the battery releasing oxygen. The battery basically goes into thermal run away. heat causes damage and more heat, which causes more damage and more heat.
LiFepO4 batteries are thermally stable so mechanical damage to the battery will not cause thermal run away. if a short occurs the battery gets hot for a minute or two than then runs out of power and than starts to cool down.
Unfortunately LiFePO4 batteries have a lower energy density than the more frequently used Lithium batteries. So most electric cars don’t use LiFePO4 batteries.
Here is what Tesla themselves have to say about it: “. If the battery catches fire, is exposed to high heat, or is generating heat or gases, use large amounts of water to cool the battery. It can take approximately 3,000 gallons (11,356 liters) of water, applied directly to the battery, to fully extinguish and cool down a battery fire; always establish or request an additional water supply. … Battery fires can take up to 24 hours to extinguish. Consider allowing the battery to burn while protecting exposures.” taken from https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2016_Model_S_Emergency_Response_Guide_en.pdf
Lithium metal reacts vigorously with water, yielding hydrogen gas. So, you’d never *ever* want to put water on a lithium fire. Water only makes the fire worse.
Covering with sand is in fact a good way to put out a lithium fire. But you need lots of sand. It smothers the fire by preventing oxygen ingress.
Anything else that will smother a fire can also be used. However, halogenated foams are not good because lithium metal will react with them, too. Though more slowly than with water.
People are now working on sodium metal batteries. They’ll only be much more flammable than lithium.
YEs when lithium react with water you get hydrogen gas which leaks of to the atmosphere. The lithium turns to lithium hydroxide which will no longer react with water. Furthermore the oxygen that fuels the lithium fire in the battery comes from the battery itself. Not the air. So smothering a battery in sand will not stop a battery fire.
And there really isn’t that much lithium in car batteries. A 70KWH battery weighs 453Kg but only has 63Kg of lithium. Tesla says to use about 3000 gallons of water which weighs 1000Kg. In a EV car crash very few of the battery cells in the battery pack are actually damaged and burning. Using 3000gallons of water you prevent the undamaged batteries from getting hot which would prevent the fire from spreading. And the few batteries that are during will rapidly run out of energy and the fire will go out.
Eric – your point is a fair one but you have the physics entirely wrong. There is no free lithium metal in a battery fire. It is more serious that that. A lithium ion cell can experience a “thermal runaway” where, if it is heated to a high enough temperature, a complex exothermic reaction starts that is self sustaining and produces it’s own oxygen.
Not nice, but in principle not worse that this crazy business of riding around sitting on a large quantity of flammable liquid: conventional car fires are more likely than EV fires
There are two ways for a gasoline fire to start in a ICE.
1) Mechanical damage to the tank causes leakage AND the fuel finds an ignition source.
2) An electric fault causes a fire that reaches the tank.
There are three ways for a battery fire to start in an EV.
1) Mechanical damage to the battery. (No need for an ignition source)
2) An electric fault causes a fire that reaches the battery.
3) A fault in the battery causes over heating that starts the fire.
The claim that EV’s are less likely to catch fire is a myth started by EV proponents.
The article is about how do you put out battery fires once they start.
Fabulous thread. Now duly informed.
If I had to design a system I would start with a ceramic blanket. Such a material can take the heat – in certain grades. With electric cars becoming common, they should map a strategy to create such a device. It should be a large tent-like structure or a large enough oval to easily cover a full sized car. It will quickly run out of oxygen – if it really is required to react. It might react with something else.
About the “2000 degrees C”. That may be a theoretical number. I’d like to see come measurements. Carbon monoxide burns at 2100 C which is why you have a blue flame floating over the BBQ coals. But good luck trying to heat something above 1200 without blowing (hard) on it.
As a former race track marshall I would be more worried about magnesium on fire than lithium. Magnesium basically can’t be extinguished with anything you can get your hands on. We had a bucket of a sand-like material on each corner that we were instructed to sprinkle around the magnesium that would prevent it spreading. Then we just watch it burn, but not too closely.
If, in the interests of lightness, someone made a mainly magnesium framed car with lithium batteries, would the combination burn in the absence of air? Bored firemen want to know such things. Good article. It is making me think. What happens if small scale PV systems are placed willy-nilly in a squatter community with no proper spacing between structures, what happens when there is an inevitable fire? A candle, an electrical short…anything.
A few days ago an informal settlement near Cape Town burned 400 homes. Two weeks ago it was 1000 on the other side of the peninsula.
If each one had a PV system with storage what would have happened?
Automated mega-warehouses use lithium battery powered robot ‘pickers’. This happened to Ocado in the UK.
They made various excuses regarding sprinklers and procedures, but of course the truth is that once a lithium battery pack has ignited, it’s all but unstoppable.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-48094801
https://www.fire-magazine.com/robot-wars-future-firefighting-challenge-arrives-today