From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
Another one goes up in flames:
A massive factory fire that began after several lithium batteries exploded has killed at least 16 people in South Korea.
The blaze broke out on Monday morning at the Aricell plant in Hwaseong city, about 45km (28 miles) south of the capital Seoul.
Local television footage showed small explosions going off as firefighters sought to put out the fire. A part of the roof had collapsed.
South Korea is a leading producer of lithium batteries, which are used in many items from electric vehicles to laptops.
Hwaseong’s medical authority, Sim Jung-sik, said 16 people have been confirmed dead while seven others were injured.
The Aricell factory housed an estimated 35,000 battery cells on its second floor, where the batteries were inspected and packaged, with more stored elsewhere.
Local fire official Kim Jin-young said the fire began when a series of battery cells exploded, though it remains unclear what triggered the initial explosions.
About 100 workers were on the premises at the time.
Mr Kim said it was difficult to enter the site initially “due to fears of additional explosions”.
As a lithium fire can react intensely with water, firefighters had to use dry sand to extinguish the blaze, which took several hours to get under control.
Lithium batteries are at risk of exploding if they are damaged or overheated. While a fire can be extinguished, it remains at risk of reigniting without warning due to the chemical reaction.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crgggmeyjj7o
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See my earlier post from today:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/06/24/weekly-climate-and-energy-news-roundup-603/#comment-3930897
Chemical batteries are like a low grade explosive, in that both parts of a chemical reaction are contained in the battery. Low order reaction, but the more energetic the battery, the more intense the reaction.
So that is my question, are these batts more likely to burn when charged, or at random? And do they burn hotter when charged? Seems they should not charge them at the factory, or maybe they must be charged there, just to check them out?
I last had a chemistry class over fifty years ago(Jesus, I’m old!), but I think the battery would be more reactive charged, on conservation of energy grounds.
Batteries consist of an excess of electrons at one terminal, and a lack of them at the other. One way or another, these electrons are going to move from where they are to where they want to be. When that happens the old I^2R law means that heat will be generated. This heat is above and beyond what would normally be generated by chemical reactions.
Many years ago they used to ship NiCAD batteries in a discharged state. Because of their high output current, they were worried about a short during shipping. Besides that, NiCAD chemistry is fine with a discharged cell. It was only when they were charged that they developed a memory and the cure for that was discharging them one cell at a time.
A charged battery has its entire watt-hour rating stored as chemical potential energy, and that’s what is released in an explosion. I don’t know about shipping them uncharged, other than if they have ever been fully charged, they die permanently if allowed to fully discharge. It may be possible to ship them with a partial charge. Many of the rechargeable electronic devices I buy (eg ear buds, bluetooth speakers, etc) require charging before use. Whether that process starts from a state of no charge, I don’t know.
They are shipped with a minimum charge. Depending on chemistry, of course, but for the LiPO it is at minimum at 20% charge.
Based on what I have read about what is happening in China, it can be in different situations, since September 2023 4 BYD dealerships burnt to the ground, after batteries and their high quality Chinese EVs just caught fire, wating in the showroom for costumers. Also on the highway when they were on a trailer to be transported to a dealer, they can just spopntaniously catch fire. During a crash it is higly possible they catch fire as the battery gets damaged. During charging they do not just catch fire but even explode, shooting them 12 feet into the air.
On average in China around 8 Evs catch fire per day. But it is all coincidence I am sure. This also happenes with combustion engines does it not…
Yes. The crash might not have a fire immediately but if the casing is distorted increases chance of fire later – especially during charging
The engine fires for ICE cars were much more likely on older cars, 15-20 yrs. These EVs are practically new and dont use a highly volatile fuel so should be zero
To bad the real world keeps generating data that runs counter to what you are so desperate to believe.
The reality is that given the huge numbers of ICE’s on the road, the total number of fires is very rare and almost all of them are the results of electrical problems, and since EVs have even more electronics than do ICEVs, as they age, they should have even more problems with electrical fires.
BTW, since very few EVs are likely to reach 15 or 20 years before being retired, your comparison are even more absurd.
In your second thought, you are talking about just the engines, correct? Gas internal combustion versus electric motors.
Are you describing the BYD cars (China EV) here?
4 since 2023.. 10 since 2021.
I wonder how many ‘costumers’ in the world, want to buy an EV. Would they then ‘dress it up’ with FF?
I’m not completely sure of the answer to that but, there’s pretty good evidence that… they don’t really know.
If they knew… they could engineer a solution that would anticipate the failure, activate the control mechanisms, and eventually reduce the incidences of fire until we would see these devices drop out of the news cycles. That isn’t happening.
Take a look at this ship fire with 3,000 EV in Europe that occurred in July of last year [https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/one-dead-cargo-ship-fire-electric-car-suspected-source-dutch-coastguard-2023-07-26/].
The issue with LiPO is both the flammable electrolyte and the polymer insulator.
When used, charging or discharging, dendrites (think stalagmites) form and penetrate the polymer. If the polymer has the rare defect, it happens more quickly. Quality control, inspections, tests, can not get to zero defects and the rate is about 5 per billion for polymer defects.
The dendrite penetrates the polymer and creates a short. That is the beginning of a thermal runaway which causes pressure to build eventually popping open the battery. At that point the flammable electrolyte forms a flame jet. The heat too often causes a cascading of thermal runaway events in adjacent cells. Once started, it is hard to stop. Once stopped, the original dendrite short still exists and the fire can re-ignite.
It is a tad more complex than that, but should be sufficient for basic understanding of the phenomenon.
over heating is what starts them. Once started charge state is irrelevant. Its a chemical fire.
Lithium Ion batteries undergo a process called formation when they are manufactured. In this process, the batteries are fully charged and discharged several times. In my experience, it was typically 4 cycles. They are measured for capacity as this process takes place.
They are not shipped fully charged. By law, they can be shipped at not more than 30% of their rated capacity. Of course, you don’t want to discharge them fully, because you destroy the capacity that way, and most charging circuits will not even attempt to charge a fully discharged cell.
Due to the construction, they also produce their own oxygen while burning. So with the electrolyte being a flammable solvent and the oxygen being produced as they burn, they are nearly impossible to extinguish.
4 cycles is the standard as I know it. Subject to change, of course.
16 people died? I’m sure this wasn’t something like a dust explosion. It seems to me they would have had to have been trapped. I think there must have been a serious deficiency in the layout of the plant – lack if escape routes – for this to happen.
These batteries violently erupt and if you are nearby, odds are you won’t have time to get away.
One or two, but sixteen? I’ve a feeling this was a very preventable tragedy.
Maybe, but they emit various deadly gases during the process and the dead may have been due to toxic inhalation, with very little time to escape.
Agree.
Learning more about this I’m most probably wrong – it seems to have gone up faster than the people there could react.
Having learned more I now agree with you – reply to negativeg1
As I understand it, the temperature of a burning LiPO battery can reach 2000 C (Li ignition point). It is extremely rapid, explosive in some cases, as spreads toxic gasses very rapidly.
can reach 2000 C
Yes, which is far too hot to approach even in full fire gear.
I agree
Unnecessary tragedy.
Events of this type have the capacity to do serious harm to the whole huge global plan to use lithium batteries in automobiles, for backup for national electricity supplies, for appliances like smart phones and for other assorted uses.
We are seeing the threat of a massive economic ripple that could require a sudden shift that affects essentially everyone. It is rare for such vast economic threat to happen so suddenly and require a fix so fast. Uncharted territory is ahead.
Predictably, there will be the usual stages of reaction to the threat. Denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance, grief.
This Korean event might be the trigger. OTOH, the battery industry might have the ability to frame it as a nothing burger. Time will tell.
……
The fire factor with Lithium batteries is emerging as yet another failure of proper, hard science to dominate over the super-trendy “ambition” as in “build it and they will come” Hollywood style.
Society MUST restructure to return experienced, knowledgeable, competent experts to high level decision making instead of banning them by cancel culture.
Older scientists like me learned in elementary chemistry classes that some metals burn in air, some spontaneously, some with a prompt. Think sodium, magnesium, phosphorus and the lesser-mentioned lithium. This failure to deal with common knowledge has to be addressed as well as what to do without lithium batteries, should that happen. Geoff S
They are more likely to ignite when charged. But most of the fire and heat once ignited is from the aprotic electrolyte and the graphite anode. Once set off the state of charge isn’t very important. Also why water isn’t very effective at extinquishing, as the aprotic electrolyte and water are immiscible.
Then it seems to me that the factory should be laid out like they do at fireworks factories, several small areas separated so that if one burns they do not all burn.
That would require a public admission that they are dangerous!
In which case what about parked cars etc?
You mean like the Titanic was built? To ensure only single compartments could flood? Hence making the ship – unsinkable.
The concept was based on one compartment flooding at a time based on damage to one area of the hull, thus giving sufficient time for passengers and crew to abandon ship.
The iceberg damaged multiple compartments which all flooded, because the collision was not head on but was along one side.
There’s a suggestion that had it been head on then it wouldn’t have sunk as quickly as it did.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120402-the-myth-of-the-unsinkable-ship
If it hit head on, it might not have sunk at all.
I suspect most fireworks factories make multiple, unrelated end products. Lithium battery factories are more likely to just be multiple steps necessary for all finished products.
When the roof falls, the cubicles are all impacted.
Not being flippant, but … these people are true victims of “climate change”TM. Sadly.
Now imagine this happening to a grid-scale battery. I’d rather have the 1.5 deg. C increase in average temperature, thank you very much.
I have the misfortune of living in a Renewable Energy Zone. They are up to more than 50 projects proposed just for our region alone and most of them have a matching megawatt BESS battery backup. For example one of the projects is for a 600MW solar installation as well as a 600MW BESS.
We’ve had some massive fires here over time so the additional risk is quite frankly frightening. Not to mention turning out beautiful rural countryside into an industrial zone.
Grid scale battery fire…. an excellent plot for a horror movie.
Don’t know if WUWT reported this, but there was a massive fire and explosion and battery recycling plant in Scotland several months ago. Didn’t say if lithium-ion batteries were involved….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skEY9ct00fM
and this…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWBxrRB_jGI
Plant officials in the second video says lithium-ion batteries (along with other materials) should not be recycled.
There was a large battery fire in Scotland yesterday too.
Vapes, toothbrushes, phones, laptops, scooters, motorcycles, gardening equipment, cars, trucks,outdoor lighting, hearing aids, vacuum cleaners, power hand tools, portable power supplies, home batteries, and the list and numbers are growing along with the danger. Regulation isn’t too far off.
Like the regulation to centralize building wind and solar generation facilities to take all decisions, and rights, out of local hands? In other words, measures to support the fanatics, all others be damned?
Story tip: Toddler locked in Tesla with dead battery https://www.wifr.com/2024/06/24/toddler-trapped-car-after-tesla-battery-dies/
Not an irresponsible parent: she put her granddaughter in the seat, “And I closed the door, went around the car, get in the front seat and my car was dead,”
Ended ok at least: A firefighter climbed through the window and pulled the little girl free.
Some common misrepresentations here.
The lithium in lithium ion batteries is not elemental lithium, which does react with water. The lithium in lithium ion batteries is in the form of salts which are non-reactive with water. Therefore water can in fact be used to extinguish lithium ion battery fires, and in fact that is the recommended firefighting method. The water does not stop combustion directly, but rather cools down the cells and the gases they emit (the combustion or fire comes from the off gases) such that the fire eventually goes out.
Also, while it is true that lithium ion batteries can “explode”, and some writers have taken to comparing the maximum theoretical energy of a lithium ion cell with a fixed mass of TNT (generally 5.7 grams is quoted), they are not the same thing at all. TNT is used as an explosive material to literally “blow stuff up” because it generates very high detonation pressure and very high velocity of detonation, both of which can be thought of as the violent speed of the explosive reaction. TNT has a detonation pressure of about 170 bar, while an “exploding” lithium ion battery has a detonation pressure of less than about 1 percent of that value.
So what typically happens with “exploding” lithium ion batteries is that, contrary to common and media descriptions, a lithium battery only destroys its own integrity and does not, for instance, blow up a vehicle or a building in which it resides. Some commonly used explosives like PETN and RDX are considerably more powerful and violent on a mass basis, and in terms of detonation pressure, than TNT.
The biggest damage resulting from runaway reactions in lithium ion batteries therefore is the fire, not the “explosion”, though the explosion often results in a fire ignited by the heated off gases from the destroyed battery cell. But as with explosions, not all fires behave the same.
The speed of propagation of a lithium battery fire is far slower than that from a gasoline vapor fire. The former tends to build and propagate lowly, over minutes, while a gasoline vapor explosion propagates in a matter of milliseconds (think of the combustion of the gas-air mixture inside a gasoline engine, which takes all of 25-50 milliseconds).
Or think of it this way, one of the common complaints about EV fires is that they take a long time to put out, unlike gasoline fires. That is true – and the reason why is the same … if there is an equal amount of stored chemical energy in a slow burning lithium ion battery bank or an instantaneous combustion of a fuel tank on an ICV, you WANT to fire to take a long time to put out, because that is what saves your life, and spares you from instantaneous death.
So if you are sitting inside a EV with a battery fire, or inside a building with a lithium ion battery fire, you have a good long time to evacuate to safety, whereas with a gasoline vapor fire, you’re effectively toast (dead) virtually instantaneously. Which is why gasoline fuel fires in ICVs do truly “explode” and instantly kill occupants, unlike the fires or “explosions” of EVs.
Sorry Duane, you didn’t make me feel more safe. I/We have seen videos of lithium battery fires/explosions and they are like fireworks. If you are not around or asleep when the battery erupts having time to get away means nothing when the building and adjoining structures burn down. Watching firefighters prolonged drenching of lithium battery fires to cool them down only to reignite and start the process all over doesn’t give a warm fuzzy either.
How fast can you get out of the back of a bus?
Rubbish. Most ICE fires are in the engine compartment where theres a limited store of fuel. Thats stored at the back of the car separately and needs the fire to move from engine compartment to the rear to go boom ( unless its a Porsche)
Im not familar with how a modern battery ignites but other experts say explode too
https://www.worksafe.act.gov.au/health-and-safety-portal/safety-alerts/lithium-ion-battery-explosion
Even when the fire does reach the gas tank, there is no “boom”. The worst that will happen is that the tank pressurized to 3 or 4 pounds per square inch, at which time the pressure relief valve in the gas cap starts letting the vapor out.
I have had the unhappy experience of 3 battery events.
1 was a lead acid car battery that exploded under the hood.
The other 2 were lithium thionyl chloride (primary) cells. Those explosively vented.
In one, I have the scars from it. In the other, 2 airmen went to the infirmary for having inhaled the gases.
All batteries can explode. Some have higher probabilities than others.
One other thing people miss with EVs is, if in an impact accident, it is imperative to replace the battery pack. The shock makes it a ticking time bomb. The cost can be as much as a good used ICE car.
The other thing people miss with EVs is, if buying used, replace the battery pack before driving it for the first time.
Which is why gasoline fuel fires in ICVs do truly “explode”
Stop getting your information from TV. Go fight a few car fires.
I had a car fire. Spilled some oil on the hot manifold. Took a few seconds with a standard extinguisher.
While there are greater numbers of ICE car fires, those are much easier to extinguish. Cost risk benefit analysis favors ICE significantly if one segregates the climate apocalypse from the calculation.
There are a greater number of ICE car fires, but there are also a much greater number of ICE cars, as well as the fact that the average age of the entire fleet is a lot older. They are also driven a lot more miles.
Duane, why are you so eager to tell lies about gasoline?
The only place ICEVs “explode” is in Hollywood. Out here in the real world that never happens, as you well know. Inside the tanks, there is little to no oxygen, so fire, much less explosion is impossible.
Outside the tank, the vapor is in open air so once again, fires are impossible.
If a petrol tank is full you can drop a lighted match into it and the match will be extinguished, I think mythbusters or something similar demonstrated this.
True. Without an ample supply of oxygen, gasoline will not burn.
I remember an episode where they shot up a tank with tracer rounds. Even then they had trouble getting the spilled gas to ignite.
The professionals seem to disagree with you.
Duane,
Other flammable metals like magnesium are usually made fireproof when converted to salts. Like magnesium sulphate becomes Epson Salts, with only fire in the belly as a risk.
If, as you claim, fires should not happen in lithium salt batteries, what chemical reactions are you talking about? Can you write the equations with their thermodynamics heats of combustion?
Observation: Lithium battery cars and buses are occasionally exploding.
Duane: But they do not use Lithium metal.
Me: Then what explodes?
Geoff S
What explodes? The electrolyte.
As to the plant, is the lithium delivered to the plant as a salt, or is it converted to sal in the plant? If it’s delivered as a metal, then there is metallic lithium in that plant.
What catches fire is an organic electrolyte that contains hydrogen, carbon and oxygen as well as lithium salts
If I’ve understood correctly if the fire in an EV is caught early enough then it’s relatively easy to extinguish. However, if there’s thermal runaway then it’s the devil’s own job to extinguish as water is the only option and that is used to cool the battery down rather than put out the fire, using around 10 times the volume needed to extinguish an ICE fire. Diesel doesn’t explode except under pressure, diesel vehicles don’t have spark plugs unlike petrol engines.
Why the down votes? He s saying truth. Even if rather selective. The bit he left out is that unlike gasoline or diesel, EVS don’t need any external reason to catch fire. You cant ;switch a battery off’
Anything that makes it too hot – internal short, external short, hot day in the Mojave – is going to set them off.
Fuel cars seldom catch fire spontaneously. EVS almost always do
Some of what he is saying is true, much of it has been disproven many times.
Lying by selective exclusion, is still lying.
The graphic.
A future parking garage?
And Ralph Nader thought Chevrolet Corvairs were a problem!
It will always remain unclear as long as “Net Zero” is being pushed. If it ever became clear, then Lithium batteries would be outlawed. The US has already outlawed rechargeable mercury batteries because these were deemed as a mercury health risk to the environment.
Why are we having fires at battery recycling centres?The huge blaze that erupted at a recycling plant near Glasgow represents the second of its kind in Scotland since April.
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/why-is-scotland-seeing-a-surge-in-fires-at-battery-recycling-centres#:~:text=She%20told%20STV%20News%3A%20%E2%80%9CWe,batteries%20are%20becomin
There have been reports of fires starting in garbage collection trucks caused by batteries thrown away in household waste.
Lithium is used in differnt ways in Li battery design. Sometimes. Li metal is the anode. In other designs, Li salts can be the electrode.
“ The severe side reaction between active lithium metal and electrolyte forms an uneven, unstable solid electrolyte interface (SEI), which in turn induces lithium dendritic growth, internal short circuits, and low coulombic efficiency (CE) [10,11]. Avoiding or reducing the risk of batteries catching fire to improve battery safety has become an urgent issue. Recently, numerous reports have focused on thermal runaway in lithium-based batteries and its mechanism [[12], [13], [14]]. Under extreme conditions such as mechanical damage, electrical abuse, and thermal abuse (Fig. 1a), a series of exothermic chain reactions can easily occur in the battery, resulting in a sharp increase in battery temperature and uncontrollable overheating, known as thermal runaway [7,15,16]”
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esci.2021.12.003
This flammability of EV topic is best left to those working with it. I apologise if I misled in previous comments, through not addressing variations in design of EV batteries.
I repeat my concerns that the consequences of uncontrollable fires are huge. When a lot of money is involved, the chance of accurate, complte scientific description can be lowered in favour of words deflecting thoughts away from the core problems.
Geoff S
I believe you meant cathode.
I wonder how easy it is and at what cost to get insurance on a lithium ion battery factory or waste battery processing facility?
Progressively getting more expensive with each ensuing fire?