‘The crew tried to put out the fire themselves, but failed. Unfortunately one person died and several others were injured.’
The coastguard said the incident happened about 17 miles (14.5 nautical miles) north of the northern island of Ameland. Images taken from shore showed a long plume of grey smoke drifting over the sea from the stricken 650-foot ship.
Cargo ship was sailing from Germany to Egypt when an electric car caught fire
Crew attempted to put the flames out themselves, with at least one being killed
The race is on to prevent the sinking of a cargo ship off the Dutch coast which is carrying almost 3,000 vehicles, including 350 Mercedes-Benz, as it burns out of control with an electric car believed to be behind the deadly fire.
At least one crew member died and others were injured after fire ripped through the Fremantle Highway, a 18,500-ton car-carrying vessel. Rescue helicopters and boats evacuated 23 crew members from the Panamanian-registered ship.
Officials have said there are ‘many’ wounded. Some suffered broken bones, burns and breathing problems and were taken to hospitals in the northern Netherlands, emergency officials said.
Coast guard spokeswoman Lea Versteeg stated:
that the ship is carrying 2,857 cars, of which 25 are electrical.
Also, the ship was also carrying fifteen Lamborghini Aventador LP 780-4 Ultimae supercars, with a rough retail price of more than $500,000 each.
She said this
‘made the fire even more difficult. It’s not easy to keep that kind of fire under control and even in such a vessel it’s not easy.’
Listing previous incidents, the Mail notes:
In 2022, a fire-ravaged US-bound cargo ship that was transporting thousands of supercars including Porsches sunk in the middle of the Atlantic.
The ship was transporting electric and non-electric vehicles, it was reported at the time. Suspicion fell on lithium batteries used in electric vehicles.
Porsche lost 1,117 cars on the ship, Audi claimed a loss of 1,944 vehicles, Bentley lost 189, Lamborghini lost 85, and Volkswagen lost 561 cars.
If this incident can be properly traced to an electric car fire it’s obviously going to cause some rethinking in the shipping of electric vehicles.
There may be some serious insurance issues preventing electric vehicles from being shipped in freighters in the future. It will be a while before this all shakes out.
Perhaps electric car makers will jump on the bandwagon of “source locally”.
Here in the marvelous state of Connecticut, the governor mandated the mass transit buses to go to EVs. Almost immediately, one of these EV buses sitting idle in a parking lot spontaneously combusted and no one could put the fire out. It burned to a crisp leaving only a shell behind. The governor suspended the use of electric buses. This took place back in the late winter.
So, electric cars are going to save the planet and all the rich folks virtue signaling to their rich friends drive these spontaneous combustion bombs. Look at me – no emissions! Aren’t I wonderful? In reality, they take more diesel to mine raw materials, create more waste, use fossil fuels to charge and are more expensive, have a range less than the manufactures’ state and cause massive corporate losses…eh emm… FoMoCo. What was it that is good about them again?
brinsleyjenkins
July 30, 2023 11:17 pm
Non of these dangerous changes would be required if it were not for the policy of Net Zero.
The argument is Carbon foot prints are bad causing Global Warming, climate change, or a climate emergency.
Looking a CO2 in different way how does it warm, the idea goes its Radiation, infra red and CO2 causes warming.
CO2 reacts by resonating with Infrared, that is the only way energy is transferred by radiation
Its only a small band of higher energy photons from natural Sun light, and these are mostly used in the first 20parts per million CO2. This happened millions of years ago and without more photons little further happens.
This log declining effect is noted in the Penn Uni experiment, confirming Prof Happer’s own calculations and experiments.
CO2 can not able to act as claimed, it’s deception destroying generation, industry, transport, and civilisation itself.
observa
July 31, 2023 12:02 am
Yes whatever the fire cause once an EV goes thermal runaway on a RoRo car carrier with a modicum of them onboard the whole ship and cargo is doomed so head for the lifeboats ASAP. Assuming there’s time to launch them free of the toxic fumes or heat or else you’ll need to jump into the sea and await rescue- Fremantle Highway Update | Why So Many Fires on Car Carriers? – YouTube
Don’t forget your life jacket with whistle and winky light of course and look out for others bobbing around before you with 30 metre plunges.
You only need to take a tour of such car carriers with their loading to realize that and we’re supposedly headed for 100% incendiary EVs on them in future- Roro Ship car vessel tour and walk around inside a Glovis roro ship car supply chain Felicity Ace – YouTube
Even if you don’t fill the Fremantle Highway to its 6000 capacity naturally the cars have to be loaded bottom decks up and you’ll want a fair few of the heavy ones at the bottom. Now if brand new EVs can go up in smoke with minimal transit charge then you do not want to be on a car and passenger ferry with aged ones of various states of care/repair with up to full charges.
As someone noted with DFDS ferries they don’t even allow you to have a full or empty petrol/diesel can with your ICE car but only in the appropriate Regulated/Approved car fuel tank. They’re only thinking of your safety naturally- Legal | DFDS
this is getting to be quite a habit. why is it happening so often on car carriers and not ferries?
the number of electic cars being carried is minimal, so the odds against this are even higher…’but still they came’….
it dies seem a bit easy to blame the ev. and of course the investigation, by panama, will do nothing, even though they have just taken over sg at the IMO.
Doesn’t matter what starts a fire with crammed EVs as all it takes is one to go thermal runaway and goodbye ship and cargo with contagion as flooding with CO2 like you can with ICEs is useless. These RoRo losses are simply the warning alarm of Titanic type passenger losses with ferries as EVs become more ubiquitous on them.
EVs are a higher percentage of new cars than they are cars on the road.
Gregg Eshelman
July 31, 2023 2:57 am
Sounds like the solution is “Batteries not included”. Ship the batteries separately, on the top deck, palleted and with a forklift that has fire shielding to pick up a crate and drop it overboard if it catches fire.
Allianz Commercial, have revealed, that in the last five years, they’ve lost 64 ships due to fire, carrying BEVs or lithium batteries.
bobpjones
July 31, 2023 5:18 am
Just a thought, what about homes, that have lithium batteries for their PV panels, and these new fangled battery storage systems for when the wind don’t blow. Can you imagine a battery farm, like the one near Hull, going up?
I don’t know if any power walls have burned up, but I do remember at least one instance in which a battery backup for either a wind or solar farm caught fire.
Ship them in modified shipping containers. With temp, smoke and fire sensors along with a continuous water flooding system per container, permanently plumbed in. All remotely operated. On first report of a hot container, flood it.
In order to carry an equivalent number of EV cars, taking that approach would require larger transport ships carrying specialized EV fire suppression infrastructure — enough to support the needs of each individual container.
It’s easy to believe that a specialized EV transport ship would need half again more internal volume in order to carry an equivalent number of EV cars. Or possibly even double the internal volume.
That said, the idea still has merit if the additional cost of constructing an EV oriented transport ship is not considered to be an issue.
The same concept might be applied to parking garages. If one is willing to reduce the total number of parking slots by half, it might be possible to install a fire suppression container for each allocated EV slot.
Drivers park their cars in the containers and a central control room closes all the container doors in every container if a fire is detected anywhere in the parking garage.
You could build them like container ships. Each container having 2 or 3 isolated internal compartments. The advantage with containers is that they are stackable.
An EV car container buried inside a stack of containers must be able to control and contain the fire for as long as it takes to unload the stack, retrieve the affected EV container, remove it from the EV container isolation compartment it happens to be in, transport it to the ship’s rail, and then toss it overboard. After that, it’s somebody else’s problem.
No, a EV car inside a sealed steel container is very much the problem of anyone on that ship, and I doubt it would be physically possible to get close enough too it to attach crane hooks to it, since it will be above the melting point and glowing white hot in short order.
But it will almost surely explode if it is sealed up even loosely, given the enormous volume of the combustion gasses and the temperature of them.
I suspect a sealed container may make a burning EV many times more dangerous, as it will be effectively a giant bomb. Explosives work by producing large volumes of gasses in a short amount of time.
No common material or container can possibly be strong enough to contain the resultant force.
Just a quick back of the envelope calculation shows that a 1000kg Li-ion battery will produce on the order of 780 liters per kg, or 390,000 liters of combustion gasses.
For comparison, sources give the volume of gasses produced by the detonation of RDX as about 201 liters per kg.
Oops, wait…that is the numbers for 1 mole of RDX, producing 9 moles of gas. Molecular weight of RDX is ~222.26.
Molecular weights are given as grams per mole. So one mole is 222 grams.
So one kg is almost five times that amount, if my inside my head math is right.
So the two items produce amounts of gas that are close to being equal, more or less.
IOW, a lithium ion battery fire produces about the same amount or at least a comparable amount of gas as a high explosive bomb weighing, what…1000 kg?
This comports with another source stating that 1 gram of TNT produces about 1 liter of combustion gasses. About a 1000 fold increase in volume.
Note that all of these volumes are given as gasses at STP, and these gasses are not at STP, they are at 2000° C.
Heating a gas by 2000°C will cause about, if I am reading the numbers right, about a 30 fold expansion.
So that battery will produce more like 8 or 9 million liters of gas at 2000°C
So yeah, I think even if my BOTE calc is way off, that container is exploding long before it melts.
For comparison, Mythbusters blew up a cement truck using ANFO.
Parts of the truck flew an entire mile away, and the truck was not sealed, but they did use 5000 pounds of the stuff.
I think I am going to write to Adam Savage and ask him if they can test the myth that a shipping container can contain an EV battery fire!
If you never saw it, here is what happens when you only partially contain the release of a large volume of gasses: https://youtu.be/4IcHUHRf_S0
If there was any easy solution, it would have been done by now. Each time this happens, the loss is enormous.
All those cars, and the ship, and people killed and badly injured.
Do these types of fire require oxygen to burn?
If not, sealing them up would make a bad situation worse.
If it did not blow up from the pressure of all those combustion gasses, the whole thing would be white hot before long.
And as far as I have always seen, even sitting on a street outside, a fire department has a nearly impossible time putting out one of these fires.
I think they mostly try to just keep it from getting so hot it ignites nearby objects from the radiant heat.
So, here is one answer to my questions:
“Here’s what you need to know about thermal runaway, and the tools and tactics that will actually get the job done – or at least help.
“The truth of the matter is there is no simple solution or tool to stop a thermal runaway in an EV’s high-voltage battery,” writes Durham.
UNDERSTANDING THERMAL RUNAWAYA high-voltage battery is made up of many cells packed tightly together inside a watertight, fire-resistant box. When a single cell fails, it is essentially a small explosive that produces a tremendous amount of gas and heat (1,200 degrees F) in tenths of a second. The failure is an exothermic chemical reaction that does not require oxygen from the atmosphere to sustain itself. The heat released from each individual cell is transferred to the neighboring cells, which causes them to fail as well.
Once a battery cell fails, it is impossible to extinguish the failed cell as the chemical reaction inside the cell happens far too quickly. The only way to stop a thermal runaway is by directly cooling the cells involved to ensure that the failed cell does not cause the cells around it to also fail.
With that in mind, what tools and firefighters use to stop thermal runaway and extinguish these fires? FIREFIGHTING FOAMFirefighting foams work by creating a blanket to smother a fire. Many types of foam have properties that cool the surrounding area by assisting the water in absorbing heat. Unfortunately, getting the foam to the failed cells is difficult, if not impossible, because the thermal runaway event is happening inside a watertight, fire-resistant box. Additionally, even if it was possible to get the foam inside the box and flood the area with foam, the foam’s main purpose is typically to starve a fire’s oxygen supply, but a lithium-ion battery cell does not need external oxygen to burn. Consequently, foam is ineffective at stopping a thermal runaway. CLASS D EXTINGUISHERClass D extinguishers contain a powder that is designed to extinguish combustible metal fires. While they are called lithium-ion battery cells, the cells do not contain solid lithium metal, making the extinguisher ineffective. There is also no easy way to get the powder from the extinguisher directly to the cells on fire due to the construction of the box and the speed at which the battery cells fail.”
It goes on with several more examples of things that will not work to put out one of these fires, and then concludes with:
“WHAT WORKS: LET IT BURNThe truth of the matter is there is no simple solution or tool to stop a thermal runaway in an EV’s high-voltage battery. Directly cooling the battery cells is the best method, however the manufacturers do not give first responders direct access to the inside of the battery box. Trying to cool the battery cells from the outside will only extend a crew’s time on scene.
If the battery box is intact and there are no exposures, the best solution is to simply wait for the battery to burn itself out, then extinguish the remaining class A fire. While this strategy is not ideal – and not one favored by aggressive, proactive and eager firefighters – it’s really the best approach. It should only take an hour for the battery to burn itself out. The alternative will be to continually dump water on the vehicle for 6 to 8 hours.””
I think I was right…sealing up a EV car inside a closed steel shipping container would be making a giant pressure cooker bomb out of it.
The batteries are already inside a steel fire box, and it does not help much if at all once a fire starts.
There is no fire suppression that will put out these fires, since it is a runaway exothermic chemical reaction occurring inside the battery itself, that proceeds inside of a fraction of a second, before igniting the adjacent cells.
IOW, it is not a fire in the same way we typically think of them, at least not the battery itself.
The battery ignites the rest of the vehicle, which burns like any other fire, but with an impossible to extinguish source for the heat which is causing it.
IOW, these fires cannot be put out, long story short.
It may be physically impossible by any means. Sealing it up will make it worse, since no amount of steel will prevent an explosive pressure buildup from gasses and temperature. And even if a box was somehow strong enough, it would contain it and the entire box would heat up to an incredibly hot temperature.
These battery fires produce temps of something like 2000° C, or 3632°F.
Steel starts to melt at 2500F, and is incandescent yellow at 2000F.
To ignite nearby battery in other cars, they only need to get to about 354°F.
IOW, these batteries burn at over 3200°F hotter than the temp required to cause nearby batteries to undergo spontaneous combustion!
That temp will easily be reached by the radiant heat from the steel container, even if it does not explode.
And I seriously doubt it will not explode, given the tremendous amounts of gasses produced and the fact that the whole thing is likely to melt long before the max temp is reached inside of it.
“Fire ignition establishes that the cathode of the battery can catch fire. The burning lithium creates a metal fire existing at temperatures of 2,000 degrees Celsius/3632 degrees Fahrenheit. Attempting to douse the fire with water is inadvisable since this could lead to a hydrogen gas explosion!”
Nicholas McGinley: “I think I was right … sealing up a EV car inside a closed steel shipping container would be making a giant pressure cooker bomb out of it.”
One way to find out would be to place an EV into a standard shipping container, light it up, and then see what happens next.
Does the shipping container become a bomb, as you predict, or do parts of it melt before that point is reached, thus releasing the pressure of the gases before explosive disintegration of the container can occur?
The next step in the EV experimental bomb program would be to construct a shipping container which is a thick-wall cylindrical body having two spherical end caps, and mounted on a transport skid.
The idea here is to delay the point at which the EV container fails, thus allowing more time for it to be tossed overboard.
The problem with that concept is that if the container doesn’t melt first, the explosive disintegration of its thick wall shell would be even more powerful than that produced by a standard box-shaped shipping container.
In which case the EV transport ship goes up in one massive explosion and quickly sinks with the loss of all hands, not unlike the explosion suffered by HMS Hood in its fight with the German battleship Bismark.
Carry enough fresh water to flood a whole ship?
Besides for the impracticality of that, I think if a EV caught on fire while sealed up inside a steel shipping container, it would be like a bomb when it caught on fire. All those combustion gases and heat, sealed up in a box?
Sounds like it would be far worse, not better. My guess is there would be a blow torch of fire spewing from every tiny crack around the door, before the entire thing blew up like a pressure cooker bomb, sending fire and tons of shrapnel in every direction.
As for the flooding, I think if one car caught on fire and they did flood the entire hold with fresh water, the rest of the EVs would ignite from short circuits before the ship got to port, and maybe within a very short time.
If they used salt water, they would definitely all ignite almost immediately.
Water will not put out an EV battery fire.
It will instead cause a secondary hydrogen explosion.
It is an exothermic chemical reaction, not combustion.
The rest of the car burns like a regular fire, but with a 2000C hot lighter inside of it that is impossible to extinguish.
So flooding a container in which an EV is inside and on fire, will add steam to the gigantic pressure cooker bomb.
ResourceGuy
July 31, 2023 6:48 am
I think they have inadvertently discovered a new way to dispose of waste windmill blades and other renewable energy refuse at sea. Load it up in car carrier holds with a few EVs on board.
ResourceGuy
July 31, 2023 6:51 am
Where is the air quality and toxic gas reporting?
Dr. Bob
July 31, 2023 7:51 am
Remember, almost all vehicles now are some form of hybrid including mild hybrids. All have Li-Ion batteries which will contribute to fire.
As someone who works in the fire industry. A number massive global insurance companies banded together and spent millions on researching how to attack lithium-ion battery fires. They tried a few things to fight a lithium-oim fires. Putting water on the battery. This did not work. Next they started a battery fire and submerged under water. This did not work. They tried liquard nitrogen. They even tried using nitrogen gas and a vacuum chamber. After millions of dollars they worked out there is only one thing that can put out a lithium-ion fires. TIME. They stood on the stage of this massive conference (I was there) and said let it burn and wait it out. They tried a number of gases products that claim they can put out the a battery fire but these did not work due to them being self oxygen producing.
What they found with all this testing was car batteries are quite safe as the chances of something going wrong is small however still very severe. What they found out what they is currently rumours of aftermarket batteries being product for cars like Telsa, Ford, Honda and Toyota they are much much worse in quality. Look at electric scooter fires. They are super common because the batteries are rubbish. The Australian fire industry is extremely worried about the prospect of EV cars have poor quality aftermarket batteries driving relatively soon.
Can we have the full methodology and outcomes of these Insurance Industry experiments and their conclusion please?
The transport vessel and the EV cargo racks mounted around its perimeter must be configured to support the quick ejection of a burning vehicle. It’s possible to imagine that each EV is loaded into a weather resistant container whose door faces outward from the perimeter of the ship. When a fire occurs, the inner protective sleeve of the container and the EV itself are pushed out the door together and drop into the ocean. Pressing the ejection button also informs the ship’s central computer to automatically fill out the required insurance paperwork.
So all they need to do is invent those devices, and build a new fleet of ships that are built that way, instead of like now with all the cars inside the hold of the ship below deck.
Or they need to invent batteries that do not burst into flames to begin with.
It’s fairly evident at this point that a ship which can safely transport an EV must be designed from the keel up to handle the risks of an EV fire. That means having the capability to reliably eject the EV from the ship within a minute or possibly less of the fire’s initiation.
The prognosis for EV parking garages is even worse. Your analysis demonstrates that using protective containers as a means of dealing with an EV fire inside a parking garage has the potential to cause a catastrophic explosion in which the entire structure collapses.
If the eco-Taleban west require means to transport electric vehicles globally and shipping is an issue, then it’s just as well that western countries have cultivated friendly and cooperative relationships with Russia and China so that transportation across those countries by road and rail can be a solution. O wait …
SteveZ56
August 2, 2023 10:46 am
Recommended procedures for shipping electric cars across the ocean:
Don’t ship electric cars and gasoline-powered cars on the same ship.
2.If you have to ship electric cars and gasoline-powered cars on the same ship, park the electric cars on the edge of the deck, from where they can be easily pushed overboard in case of fire.
3.If steps 1 and 2 above are not feasible, ship electric cars on Joe Biden’s railroad across the Indian Ocean.
Here in the marvelous state of Connecticut, the governor mandated the mass transit buses to go to EVs. Almost immediately, one of these EV buses sitting idle in a parking lot spontaneously combusted and no one could put the fire out. It burned to a crisp leaving only a shell behind. The governor suspended the use of electric buses. This took place back in the late winter.
I voted for the other guy.
Cut them some slack. They’re saving the planet.
No they know they are not saving the planet, they just hate the little people.
Shush, they have just enough slack for the drop.
So, electric cars are going to save the planet and all the rich folks virtue signaling to their rich friends drive these spontaneous combustion bombs. Look at me – no emissions! Aren’t I wonderful? In reality, they take more diesel to mine raw materials, create more waste, use fossil fuels to charge and are more expensive, have a range less than the manufactures’ state and cause massive corporate losses…eh emm… FoMoCo. What was it that is good about them again?
Non of these dangerous changes would be required if it were not for the policy of Net Zero.
The argument is Carbon foot prints are bad causing Global Warming, climate change, or a climate emergency.
Looking a CO2 in different way how does it warm, the idea goes its Radiation, infra red and CO2 causes warming.
CO2 reacts by resonating with Infrared, that is the only way energy is transferred by radiation
Its only a small band of higher energy photons from natural Sun light, and these are mostly used in the first 20parts per million CO2. This happened millions of years ago and without more photons little further happens.
This log declining effect is noted in the Penn Uni experiment, confirming Prof Happer’s own calculations and experiments.
CO2 can not able to act as claimed, it’s deception destroying generation, industry, transport, and civilisation itself.
Yes whatever the fire cause once an EV goes thermal runaway on a RoRo car carrier with a modicum of them onboard the whole ship and cargo is doomed so head for the lifeboats ASAP. Assuming there’s time to launch them free of the toxic fumes or heat or else you’ll need to jump into the sea and await rescue-
Fremantle Highway Update | Why So Many Fires on Car Carriers? – YouTube
Don’t forget your life jacket with whistle and winky light of course and look out for others bobbing around before you with 30 metre plunges.
You only need to take a tour of such car carriers with their loading to realize that and we’re supposedly headed for 100% incendiary EVs on them in future-
Roro Ship car vessel tour and walk around inside a Glovis roro ship car supply chain Felicity Ace – YouTube
Even if you don’t fill the Fremantle Highway to its 6000 capacity naturally the cars have to be loaded bottom decks up and you’ll want a fair few of the heavy ones at the bottom. Now if brand new EVs can go up in smoke with minimal transit charge then you do not want to be on a car and passenger ferry with aged ones of various states of care/repair with up to full charges.
As someone noted with DFDS ferries they don’t even allow you to have a full or empty petrol/diesel can with your ICE car but only in the appropriate Regulated/Approved car fuel tank. They’re only thinking of your safety naturally-
Legal | DFDS
Winky light? I had no idea you could get lights to go on there – what will people think of next!
this is getting to be quite a habit. why is it happening so often on car carriers and not ferries?
the number of electic cars being carried is minimal, so the odds against this are even higher…’but still they came’….
it dies seem a bit easy to blame the ev. and of course the investigation, by panama, will do nothing, even though they have just taken over sg at the IMO.
it dies seem a bit easy to blame the ev.
Doesn’t matter what starts a fire with crammed EVs as all it takes is one to go thermal runaway and goodbye ship and cargo with contagion as flooding with CO2 like you can with ICEs is useless. These RoRo losses are simply the warning alarm of Titanic type passenger losses with ferries as EVs become more ubiquitous on them.
There does exist a safe storage and operation regime already for these incendiary carriages-
LandCruiser ‘Mudcrab’ driven 7km under water across Darwin Harbour (msn.com)
Yeah it’s all fine until it needs a charge.
EVs are a higher percentage of new cars than they are cars on the road.
Sounds like the solution is “Batteries not included”. Ship the batteries separately, on the top deck, palleted and with a forklift that has fire shielding to pick up a crate and drop it overboard if it catches fire.
At least 250,000,000 USD up in smoke.
Double that if the boat itself is a total loss.
Allianz Commercial, have revealed, that in the last five years, they’ve lost 64 ships due to fire, carrying BEVs or lithium batteries.
Just a thought, what about homes, that have lithium batteries for their PV panels, and these new fangled battery storage systems for when the wind don’t blow. Can you imagine a battery farm, like the one near Hull, going up?
I don’t know if any power walls have burned up, but I do remember at least one instance in which a battery backup for either a wind or solar farm caught fire.
Ship them in modified shipping containers. With temp, smoke and fire sensors along with a continuous water flooding system per container, permanently plumbed in. All remotely operated. On first report of a hot container, flood it.
In order to carry an equivalent number of EV cars, taking that approach would require larger transport ships carrying specialized EV fire suppression infrastructure — enough to support the needs of each individual container.
It’s easy to believe that a specialized EV transport ship would need half again more internal volume in order to carry an equivalent number of EV cars. Or possibly even double the internal volume.
That said, the idea still has merit if the additional cost of constructing an EV oriented transport ship is not considered to be an issue.
The same concept might be applied to parking garages. If one is willing to reduce the total number of parking slots by half, it might be possible to install a fire suppression container for each allocated EV slot.
Drivers park their cars in the containers and a central control room closes all the container doors in every container if a fire is detected anywhere in the parking garage.
You could build them like container ships. Each container having 2 or 3 isolated internal compartments. The advantage with containers is that they are stackable.
An EV car container buried inside a stack of containers must be able to control and contain the fire for as long as it takes to unload the stack, retrieve the affected EV container, remove it from the EV container isolation compartment it happens to be in, transport it to the ship’s rail, and then toss it overboard. After that, it’s somebody else’s problem.
No, a EV car inside a sealed steel container is very much the problem of anyone on that ship, and I doubt it would be physically possible to get close enough too it to attach crane hooks to it, since it will be above the melting point and glowing white hot in short order.
But it will almost surely explode if it is sealed up even loosely, given the enormous volume of the combustion gasses and the temperature of them.
I suspect a sealed container may make a burning EV many times more dangerous, as it will be effectively a giant bomb. Explosives work by producing large volumes of gasses in a short amount of time.
No common material or container can possibly be strong enough to contain the resultant force.
Just a quick back of the envelope calculation shows that a 1000kg Li-ion battery will produce on the order of 780 liters per kg, or 390,000 liters of combustion gasses.
For comparison, sources give the volume of gasses produced by the detonation of RDX as about 201 liters per kg.
Oops, wait…that is the numbers for 1 mole of RDX, producing 9 moles of gas. Molecular weight of RDX is ~222.26.
Molecular weights are given as grams per mole. So one mole is 222 grams.
So one kg is almost five times that amount, if my inside my head math is right.
So the two items produce amounts of gas that are close to being equal, more or less.
IOW, a lithium ion battery fire produces about the same amount or at least a comparable amount of gas as a high explosive bomb weighing, what…1000 kg?
This comports with another source stating that 1 gram of TNT produces about 1 liter of combustion gasses. About a 1000 fold increase in volume.
Note that all of these volumes are given as gasses at STP, and these gasses are not at STP, they are at 2000° C.
Heating a gas by 2000°C will cause about, if I am reading the numbers right, about a 30 fold expansion.
So that battery will produce more like 8 or 9 million liters of gas at 2000°C
So yeah, I think even if my BOTE calc is way off, that container is exploding long before it melts.
I see I somehow multiplied 780 by 1000 and got a number half as big as the actual answer.
So double that last volume.
16 to 18 million liters.
Edit:
Nevermind. I got the right number because EV batteries are not 1000 kg but 1000 pounds, about.
Average. But some can be twice that!
For comparison, Mythbusters blew up a cement truck using ANFO.
Parts of the truck flew an entire mile away, and the truck was not sealed, but they did use 5000 pounds of the stuff.
I think I am going to write to Adam Savage and ask him if they can test the myth that a shipping container can contain an EV battery fire!
If you never saw it, here is what happens when you only partially contain the release of a large volume of gasses:
https://youtu.be/4IcHUHRf_S0
They were a mile away and jumped out of their skin when it blew up.
I was wrong again…they used 850 pounds of explosives here.
Fat chance that’s ever going to happen.
If there was any easy solution, it would have been done by now. Each time this happens, the loss is enormous.
All those cars, and the ship, and people killed and badly injured.
Do these types of fire require oxygen to burn?
If not, sealing them up would make a bad situation worse.
If it did not blow up from the pressure of all those combustion gasses, the whole thing would be white hot before long.
And as far as I have always seen, even sitting on a street outside, a fire department has a nearly impossible time putting out one of these fires.
I think they mostly try to just keep it from getting so hot it ignites nearby objects from the radiant heat.
So, here is one answer to my questions:
“Here’s what you need to know about thermal runaway, and the tools and tactics that will actually get the job done – or at least help.
“The truth of the matter is there is no simple solution or tool to stop a thermal runaway in an EV’s high-voltage battery,” writes Durham.
UNDERSTANDING THERMAL RUNAWAYA high-voltage battery is made up of many cells packed tightly together inside a watertight, fire-resistant box. When a single cell fails, it is essentially a small explosive that produces a tremendous amount of gas and heat (1,200 degrees F) in tenths of a second. The failure is an exothermic chemical reaction that does not require oxygen from the atmosphere to sustain itself. The heat released from each individual cell is transferred to the neighboring cells, which causes them to fail as well.
Once a battery cell fails, it is impossible to extinguish the failed cell as the chemical reaction inside the cell happens far too quickly. The only way to stop a thermal runaway is by directly cooling the cells involved to ensure that the failed cell does not cause the cells around it to also fail.
With that in mind, what tools and firefighters use to stop thermal runaway and extinguish these fires?
FIREFIGHTING FOAMFirefighting foams work by creating a blanket to smother a fire. Many types of foam have properties that cool the surrounding area by assisting the water in absorbing heat. Unfortunately, getting the foam to the failed cells is difficult, if not impossible, because the thermal runaway event is happening inside a watertight, fire-resistant box. Additionally, even if it was possible to get the foam inside the box and flood the area with foam, the foam’s main purpose is typically to starve a fire’s oxygen supply, but a lithium-ion battery cell does not need external oxygen to burn. Consequently, foam is ineffective at stopping a thermal runaway.
CLASS D EXTINGUISHERClass D extinguishers contain a powder that is designed to extinguish combustible metal fires. While they are called lithium-ion battery cells, the cells do not contain solid lithium metal, making the extinguisher ineffective. There is also no easy way to get the powder from the extinguisher directly to the cells on fire due to the construction of the box and the speed at which the battery cells fail.”
It goes on with several more examples of things that will not work to put out one of these fires, and then concludes with:
“WHAT WORKS: LET IT BURNThe truth of the matter is there is no simple solution or tool to stop a thermal runaway in an EV’s high-voltage battery. Directly cooling the battery cells is the best method, however the manufacturers do not give first responders direct access to the inside of the battery box. Trying to cool the battery cells from the outside will only extend a crew’s time on scene.
If the battery box is intact and there are no exposures, the best solution is to simply wait for the battery to burn itself out, then extinguish the remaining class A fire. While this strategy is not ideal – and not one favored by aggressive, proactive and eager firefighters – it’s really the best approach. It should only take an hour for the battery to burn itself out. The alternative will be to continually dump water on the vehicle for 6 to 8 hours.””
I think I was right…sealing up a EV car inside a closed steel shipping container would be making a giant pressure cooker bomb out of it.
The batteries are already inside a steel fire box, and it does not help much if at all once a fire starts.
There is no fire suppression that will put out these fires, since it is a runaway exothermic chemical reaction occurring inside the battery itself, that proceeds inside of a fraction of a second, before igniting the adjacent cells.
IOW, it is not a fire in the same way we typically think of them, at least not the battery itself.
The battery ignites the rest of the vehicle, which burns like any other fire, but with an impossible to extinguish source for the heat which is causing it.
IOW, these fires cannot be put out, long story short.
It may be physically impossible by any means. Sealing it up will make it worse, since no amount of steel will prevent an explosive pressure buildup from gasses and temperature. And even if a box was somehow strong enough, it would contain it and the entire box would heat up to an incredibly hot temperature.
These battery fires produce temps of something like 2000° C, or 3632°F.
Steel starts to melt at 2500F, and is incandescent yellow at 2000F.
To ignite nearby battery in other cars, they only need to get to about 354°F.
IOW, these batteries burn at over 3200°F hotter than the temp required to cause nearby batteries to undergo spontaneous combustion!
That temp will easily be reached by the radiant heat from the steel container, even if it does not explode.
And I seriously doubt it will not explode, given the tremendous amounts of gasses produced and the fact that the whole thing is likely to melt long before the max temp is reached inside of it.
Links to sources for this info:
How to extinguish an electric vehicle fire (firerescue1.com)
For all metals:
https://www.hearth.com/talk/attachments/metal-color-temp-chart-png.100306/
For this info,
“Fire ignition establishes that the cathode of the battery can catch fire. The burning lithium creates a metal fire existing at temperatures of 2,000 degrees Celsius/3632 degrees Fahrenheit. Attempting to douse the fire with water is inadvisable since this could lead to a hydrogen gas explosion!”
Source is:
Lithium-Ion Batteries and Electrical Fires | Envista Forensics
Melting point of steel:
Melting Point of Steel – Science Struck
Nicholas McGinley: “I think I was right … sealing up a EV car inside a closed steel shipping container would be making a giant pressure cooker bomb out of it.”
One way to find out would be to place an EV into a standard shipping container, light it up, and then see what happens next.
Does the shipping container become a bomb, as you predict, or do parts of it melt before that point is reached, thus releasing the pressure of the gases before explosive disintegration of the container can occur?
The next step in the EV experimental bomb program would be to construct a shipping container which is a thick-wall cylindrical body having two spherical end caps, and mounted on a transport skid.
The idea here is to delay the point at which the EV container fails, thus allowing more time for it to be tossed overboard.
The problem with that concept is that if the container doesn’t melt first, the explosive disintegration of its thick wall shell would be even more powerful than that produced by a standard box-shaped shipping container.
In which case the EV transport ship goes up in one massive explosion and quickly sinks with the loss of all hands, not unlike the explosion suffered by HMS Hood in its fight with the German battleship Bismark.
Or – just forget the whole absurd EV circus and carry on with improved efficiency diesel and petroleum vehicles.
Carry enough fresh water to flood a whole ship?
Besides for the impracticality of that, I think if a EV caught on fire while sealed up inside a steel shipping container, it would be like a bomb when it caught on fire. All those combustion gases and heat, sealed up in a box?
Sounds like it would be far worse, not better. My guess is there would be a blow torch of fire spewing from every tiny crack around the door, before the entire thing blew up like a pressure cooker bomb, sending fire and tons of shrapnel in every direction.
As for the flooding, I think if one car caught on fire and they did flood the entire hold with fresh water, the rest of the EVs would ignite from short circuits before the ship got to port, and maybe within a very short time.
If they used salt water, they would definitely all ignite almost immediately.
Water will not put out an EV battery fire.
It will instead cause a secondary hydrogen explosion.
It is an exothermic chemical reaction, not combustion.
The rest of the car burns like a regular fire, but with a 2000C hot lighter inside of it that is impossible to extinguish.
So flooding a container in which an EV is inside and on fire, will add steam to the gigantic pressure cooker bomb.
I think they have inadvertently discovered a new way to dispose of waste windmill blades and other renewable energy refuse at sea. Load it up in car carrier holds with a few EVs on board.
Where is the air quality and toxic gas reporting?
Remember, almost all vehicles now are some form of hybrid including mild hybrids. All have Li-Ion batteries which will contribute to fire.
John Cardogan gets scathing with the silent treatment/cover up-
Runaway 500 EV meltdown on cargo ship: Proof our cities aren’t ready for full EV deployment – YouTube
and note comment from @MidgetBarmaid-
As someone who works in the fire industry. A number massive global insurance companies banded together and spent millions on researching how to attack lithium-ion battery fires. They tried a few things to fight a lithium-oim fires. Putting water on the battery. This did not work. Next they started a battery fire and submerged under water. This did not work. They tried liquard nitrogen. They even tried using nitrogen gas and a vacuum chamber. After millions of dollars they worked out there is only one thing that can put out a lithium-ion fires. TIME. They stood on the stage of this massive conference (I was there) and said let it burn and wait it out. They tried a number of gases products that claim they can put out the a battery fire but these did not work due to them being self oxygen producing.
What they found with all this testing was car batteries are quite safe as the chances of something going wrong is small however still very severe. What they found out what they is currently rumours of aftermarket batteries being product for cars like Telsa, Ford, Honda and Toyota they are much much worse in quality. Look at electric scooter fires. They are super common because the batteries are rubbish. The Australian fire industry is extremely worried about the prospect of EV cars have poor quality aftermarket batteries driving relatively soon.
Can we have the full methodology and outcomes of these Insurance Industry experiments and their conclusion please?
Wakey wakey climate changers because if the insurance/public liability premiums don’t get you the Coroners will stoopids-
Coroner calls for ban on tractors made before 1982 (msn.com)
Story tip: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/solar-farm-battery-fire-upstate-new-york-possible-toxic-smoke-shelter-in-place-lyme-jefferson-county/
So just load the EV’s on the perimeter of the cargo. If they catch fire, push them over the side.
The transport vessel and the EV cargo racks mounted around its perimeter must be configured to support the quick ejection of a burning vehicle. It’s possible to imagine that each EV is loaded into a weather resistant container whose door faces outward from the perimeter of the ship. When a fire occurs, the inner protective sleeve of the container and the EV itself are pushed out the door together and drop into the ocean. Pressing the ejection button also informs the ship’s central computer to automatically fill out the required insurance paperwork.
So all they need to do is invent those devices, and build a new fleet of ships that are built that way, instead of like now with all the cars inside the hold of the ship below deck.
Or they need to invent batteries that do not burst into flames to begin with.
It’s fairly evident at this point that a ship which can safely transport an EV must be designed from the keel up to handle the risks of an EV fire. That means having the capability to reliably eject the EV from the ship within a minute or possibly less of the fire’s initiation.
The prognosis for EV parking garages is even worse. Your analysis demonstrates that using protective containers as a means of dealing with an EV fire inside a parking garage has the potential to cause a catastrophic explosion in which the entire structure collapses.
Nuclear batteries
Sweet – my dose of schadenfreude for today!
If the eco-Taleban west require means to transport electric vehicles globally and shipping is an issue, then it’s just as well that western countries have cultivated friendly and cooperative relationships with Russia and China so that transportation across those countries by road and rail can be a solution. O wait …
Recommended procedures for shipping electric cars across the ocean:
2.If you have to ship electric cars and gasoline-powered cars on the same ship, park the electric cars on the edge of the deck, from where they can be easily pushed overboard in case of fire.
3.If steps 1 and 2 above are not feasible, ship electric cars on Joe Biden’s railroad across the Indian Ocean.