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.
there was a very large fire on one of the Hawaii islands a few years ago
one of the earliest attempts at wind power stowage
as I remember it did not go well
t
Foam Blanket like an Airframe/Avtur fire?
A few years ago, I accidently punctured a LiIon battery, that was jammed in a camera. So just a small cell. It ignited straight away and nearly burned the hand off me. I literally threw it out the door into the yard and it burned away for a while before going out.
I think, the consequences of this issue for EVs will impact on insurance premiums and will probably have restrictions where one can park. Many places won’t allow them in enclosed, underground or high rise parks.
Not sure if this has come to your notice already.
https://notrickszone.com/2021/02/16/vw-hybrid-car-explodes-bursts-into-flames-22-fire-brigades-to-extinguish-hazardous-battery-fire/?fbclid=IwAR3l-iNLzIMUu1XD70rN96sTOY1mbIZyxt2x-ywnUe-qLwi4d96RhnAsDx4
It seems like only yesterday I was watching nice reviews of the Chevy Bolt. The reports of battery fires in Bolts came later.
I recall the Boeing 787 Dreamliner had a problem with a hot/burning lithium emergency battery. I don’t know exactly how the problem was overcome but apparently Boeing changed/fire proofed the battery enclosure in some way.
https://simpleflying.com/boeing-787-battery-problems-overcome/
One method I saw on a US video for dealing with vehicle lithium battery fires is to put the whole car into a large open trough filled with water. It didn’t show this contraption in use.
One of the few things NOAA may actually get correct.
We sort of covered these topics the last time WUWT discussed lithium batteries and lithium battery fires.
Leftists are willing to endanger anyone to get their EV dream.
The local PBS station has been showing wayback film clips. Including a clip of a guy who turned a Triumph Herald into an EV by stuffing it with lead acid batteries.
Steel doesn’t *melt* at 1500F but it has lost about 50% of its strength at that temperature. (Plenty weak enough for a building to collapse.) Lithium burning at 2000+ F will melt steel.
But certain people (specifically 9/11 conspiracy idjits) refuse to learn the most basic things about metals.
I think there is a basic flaw in this thread. Do Li-Ion batteries contain ANY metallic lithium?
No, but they contain flammable electrolytes
Lithium ions are pure lithium.
Cathode lithium ions are contained in an iron phosphate ceramic.
Anode lithium ions are captured in a graphite matrix.
http://nordkyndesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/LFP-internal.png
Once any part of the lithium is heated sufficiently to ignite, the lithium exothermic reaction will pull oxygen from all components.
I think you need to learn some basic chemistry. Sodium ions are pure sodium. Have you seen sodium burn ? Quite scary and like lithium burning in many ways.
Now, have you seen sodium chloride burn ? No you have not. That consists of sodium ions and chloride ions.
To portray the properties of a metallic lithium fire as somehow relevant in this article is utterly misleading and I suspect the author knows full well.
Also, someone on here said he flattened a Li-Ion battery. This is exactly what NOT to do !
Well, I suppose you could drop a ton of powdered graphite on it to smother the fire, but don’t ask me what you do next. Putting it out is extremely difficult; KEEPING it out is next to impossible. If the lithium is ever exposed to air, it will reignite.
I guess you could bury it in the same pits with scrapped wind turbine blades….
Commencing with New South Wales every State in Australia requires all EV must display a blue sticker on the front and rear licence plate as a warning for road accident and other authorities that Lithium ion batteries (exothermic reaction) are on board.
Vehicles with LPG tanks display a red sticker.
Diesel and Petrol do not require a warning sticker.
Relax, exothermic reaction is unlikely to take place until it does, faulty connection, a hard bump to the under vehicle floor batteries and worse a collision at road speeds in an EV.
A thought, occupational health and safety for company employees (and government employees) driving an EV if there is an inferno, will insurance companies raise premiums for EV insurance?
The potential disaster of spreading fire, injuries and death could be huge.
Do I get the feeling that electric cars, like wind turbines, are the cure that is worse than the disease?
Or am I missing something?
Well a few minutes of research suggest that this isn’t some huge risk…
Data obtained by the publication Air Quality News through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed that in 2019 the London Fire Brigade dealt with just 54 electric vehicle fires compared to 1,898 petrol and diesel fires. Similarly, up to October 2020, the fire services dealt with 1,021 petrol and diesel fires and just 27 electric vehicle fires.
Though this is still an evolving field, UK fires Services don’t appear alarmed and have the issue under control.
The article doesn’t really distinguish between EVs and grid scale batteries… I note that the safety systems on these battery units include a built-in alarm and a self-activating fire-suppression system, as well as a container designed to withstand some significant heat and pressure parameters.
I think that this issue demands a more measured response than ‘oh look a boogyman: we’ll all get burned and poisoned to death’.
You post specific numbers but can’t post the source/link for them.
How come?
It is also posing then answering it’s own red herring logical fallacy. Using that red herring fallacy to post a bald faced falsehood, “it isn’t some huge risk”.
Funny, that is exactly what ERCOT said about electric grid failure in Texas, and it became a problem. A huge problem that cost lives. You don’t care about that, you just spew the same leftist bullshyte as you always do, lies are all you got.
The real problem will be cheap, no-name lithium battery replacements (that Will be common in a few years) that ignite while recharging-often in enclosed space subterranean garages under apartment and office buildings. The enclosed spaces and proximity to other recharging lithium batteries will create toxic fires that flow upward through the building above.
There was a car fire in the parking garage of a Norway airport recently. Since there are many EVs in Norway, the fire soon spread and hundreds of vehicles were consumed. Remember the 1970s movie, The Towering Inferno? Well, with EVs becoming more popular, think of a similar car fire in a parking garage under a high rise condo or apartment building. The fire in Norway caused the partial collapse of the structure. Could we have a real towering inferno? Undoubtedly we will.
there were some”dont do this at home kiddies” vidclips on utube where a guy shoots a nailgun ? into a rechargeable Li battery and runs fast
pretty impressive results
did make me very careful after seeing that
Within 5-20 years, cheap knock-off lithium ion battery replacements (which will overheat during recharging and ignite at higher rates than original mfr batteries) will only be the start of our problems. As a lawyer, former firefighter:hazmat technician and law enforcement crash reconstructionist, I never underestimate the power of stupid. As used EV’s matriculate down through the levels of society, meth-tweakers, crack addicts and non-functional alcoholics will drive over curbs (fixing holes with duct tape) shoot holes in their floorboards (more duck tape) and drill holes in the floor/batteries to create hidden compartments for their sundry lifestyle enhancement substances, thereby disrupting the integrity of the inherently volatile batteries. Murphy’s law will inexorably necessitate that these upstanding citizens park their compromised vehicles under high rises (especially those with free charging) that are populated by pre-schools and senior assisted living facilities. Gaseous emissions from li ion battery fires have an expansion faction far greater than 10,000, generating a huge plume of toxic smoke and fumes that will inevitably expose the most vulnerable members of society to the toxic byproducts. IMO.
https://www.avdfire.com/ AVD extinguisher is the solution
Couple of people have already mentioned them, though another link is always good.
It’s not just the heat, and the difficulty of extinguishing the fire, there’s a huge problem with the muck given off. As already mentioned, you get a pile of lithium salts released as dust/aerosol (bad for your brain) , and then there’s the Hydrogen Flouride. Inhaling a HF mist is very bad for your lungs.
Lithium-ion battery fires are really nasty, you haven’t just got a heat problem, you have at least two serious chemical problems.
There’s actually no metallic Lithium in lithium cells. The metal is present as salts in the electrolyte. Now, that electrolyte is a nasty, poisonous volatile, and above all flammable substance. Just to add fun, it’s no point using air-excluding techniques like foam, sand, or blankets, as the reaction actually releases oxygen. So the fire is self-sustaining even in a low-oxygen environment.
The throw-it-in-a-big-tank method is just trying to reduce the temperature to be below the flash point, which can be as low as 130 deg C.
Technically, that’s Hydrogen I believe, although special conditions need I exist before it turns into what we recognise as a metal.
Like in the center of Jupiter?
I have a question. In the ACT, buildings that contain dangerous chemicals (eg lead) need to have warning signs visible to fire fighters that may be called to attend. Cars powered by LNG need warning signs. So why do cars containing large amounts of either lead or lithium not have warning signs?
You know, that’s actually a VERY good question.
EV fires 🔥 are zombie apocalypse fires; you never know when they’re finally out:
“Once the fire has been successfully put out, the problem for the fire brigade is not over.
Electric vehicle fires are known to reignite hours, days or even weeks after the initial event, and they can do so many times.
‘Just because the fire is burned out at that moment, there is no way of knowing if it will reignite in the back of the pick-up truck or in the storage grounds.’”
https://airqualitynews.com/2020/10/09/electric-vehicle-fires-should-we-be-concerned/