Americans are beginning to awaken realities of the “new green energy utopia”…which apparently entails a lot more chemistry and fire response than originally promised.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
Another dramatic example of the hazards associated with lithium-ion batteries occurred in one exploded battery processing plant near Fredericktown, Missouri. The incident prompted local evacuation.
Residents of a southeast Missouri town were forced to evacuate their homes Wednesday when a fire erupted at a nearby battery recycler.
Madison County 911 posted on Facebook around 2 p.m. on behalf of the county sheriff’s office telling residents north and west of Fredericktown to leave the area.
“If you can see or smell smoke in this area, you need to evacuate!” the post says.
In a separate post later in the afternoon, Madison County 911 and the Fredericktown Fire Department said only residents on Madison County Road 277 needed to evacuate. The county urged other residents to shelter in place. The post said the city of Fredericktown was not affected by the order.
“Close windows, doors and turn off window AC systems,” the post says. “…Again, if you see smoke, stay indoors.”
Fortunately, there were no casualties that were reported. The company, Critical Mineral Recovery, a massive lithium-ion battery recycling facility.
On its website, the company says the 225,000-square-foot plant is used to “recycle lithium-ion-battery-related materials from battery manufacturers, automotive OEMs, battery dealers, recyclers, and processors worldwide,” and describes it as “one of the largest lithium-ion battery processing facilities in the world.”
I suspect the cause of the explosion was thermal runaway, which is a a major concern with lithium-ion batteries. It occurs when a battery cell overheats, causing a chain reaction that spreads to other cells. The reaction also yields oxygen gas, which adds to the intensity of the fire.
The battery’s temperature rises slowly at first and then all at once, spiking to its peak temperature in about one second.
Another factor that makes lithium-ion battery fires challenging to handle is oxygen generation. When the metal oxides in a battery’s cathode, or positively charged electrode, are heated, they decompose and release oxygen gas. Fires need oxygen to burn, so a battery that can create oxygen can sustain a fire.
Because of the electrolyte’s nature, a 20% increase in a lithium-ion battery’s temperature causes some unwanted chemical reactions to occur much faster, which releases excessive heat. This excess heat increases the battery temperature, which in turn speeds up the reactions. The increased battery temperature increases the reaction rate, creating a process called thermal runaway. When this happens, the temperature in a battery can rise from 212 F (100 C) to 1,800 F (1000 C) in a second.
Now the state and environmental authorities are investigating the impacts of the explosion on the region.
Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources sent two people to the scene Wednesday evening to assess air quality, water runoff and other potential environmental impacts.
“Our responders will help consult on fire-response actions, take environmental samples during the event as needed and oversee cleanup measures afterward,” information officer Brian M. Quinn wrote in an email. “Environmental contractors will do the actual cleanup, and our job is to make sure it is conducted correctly.”
The federal Environmental Protection Agency will also be involved in air monitoring. Until the agencies have a better idea of the impacts, Quinn said people should avoid direct contact with the smoke and follow safety instructions from local authorities.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall that the lithium-ion battery fire at a San Diego facility took weeks to suppress. Interestingly, the nearby school remained evacuated…because further fire-suppression activities were anticipated.
Fredericktown R-1 Schools kept students indoors Thursday, according to the district’s Facebook page, but canceled classes Friday. The district said in a post Friday morning that it did not close because of air quality concerns, but rather “out of an abundance of caution” because further fire suppression efforts were expected.
Clearly, Americans are beginning to awaken realities of the “new green energy utopia”…which apparently entails a lot more chemistry and fire response than originally promised.
And the emissions from these fires is a bit more than zero as well.
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“so they can be recycled?”
Boy, their deductible is going to go up.
And they are environmentally friendly !
And far more toxic than CO2
Zackly what I wuz thinken
With enough subsidies, anything can.
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Reminds me of George Carlin’s bit about birth control pills “available in the six-pack, the sex-pack, and the handy shack-pack for you weekenders.”
Well, I imagine they could harvest the heat from the fire to run a steam turbine, ever so briefly.
But coal is a lot cheaper, and less toxic by far when burned.
All of the things that are in-transit to this facility from around the world will have no place to go – but go someplace they will. Is that a comforting thought, or what? ☠
Canada used to ship some of our garbage to the philippines, where they would just dump it in the ocean and people would find Canadian garbage washing up on the BC coast, lol.
I’m sure something like that will happen with ‘battery recycling’
Lithium has half the density of water.
Not for long.
There is no metal lithium in Li-ion batteries, only organic salt gel with Li ions.
That is true and one can process ocean water to extract Lithium.
It is doable, but not economical.
So they’ll float into the west coast and burn whatever is close to where they wash up?!
Maybe they will end in Puerto Rico?
/s
They will probably just store them on site until they get the factory running again, but there are other plants. Cirba has eight of them in the US.
Drop them at Nancy Pelosi’s place.
Ignernt question. I have read a few times of super capacitors, solid state electrical storage, but capacitors, not solid state chemical batteries. All theoretical, nothing close to practical, but supposedly with enormous potential, much more than any theoretical chemical batteries.
Q1. Is that theoretical advantage true?
Q2. Assuming it is true, suppose someone developed a super capacitor the size and weight and energy equivalent of a gasoline tank. How much danger would something like that pose? If it was deformed or broken in an accident, or shot like a movie stunt, what would happen to all that electrical energy? I realize it’s hard to predict how a mysterious theoretical product would behave, but is it possible to make crude extrapolations from current capacitors?
Capacitors can explode. Ask Rud. He has experience with capacitors and mentioned he has patents on some.
I first encountered supercapacitors in a Davis VP weather station where a small solar panel runs the station and charges the supercap and that powers the station overnight. They have a very thin insulating layer with a large areal extent. I ordered a few both to replace failed caps in the weather station and to play with them a bit. They are low voltage critters with a high internal resistance. Both of those may have improved in the past 20 years.
Can you see 2009’s https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=168518806549&set=a.168517906549 ? Text with the photo says:
With mine, I haven’t seen a spark when I short the leads. If you want to explode wires, the oil filled high voltage capacitors are still the way to go.
There has been some work using these in cars, but I haven’t been following it.
That too is a short. I’m more curious about what would happen in a traffic accident which didn’t short the leads. Maybe that’s impossible; maybe any deformation would have to include shorting the internal connections.
A simple internal short, a single short, would only degrade the capacitor. Unlike a LiPO battery which burns from the short, the capacitor just would not hold as much charge.
Had an experiment fail on a launch a while back.
One of the tests we conducted was to charge a 4400 uF capacitor (used in the system) then tap the leads together. We got a spark, repeatedly.
Capacitors have stored electrical energy. It is instantly available so will make a tremendous explosion if all the energy is released instantly under fault conditions.
This video shows the destructive power of a 700J capacitor:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJuo-cXzYws
A capacitor that stores the energy of a tank of gasoline, say 100kg as F! racing cars, would be 67 million times the 700J of these capacitors.
The energy in gasoline cannot be released without an oxygen source, which is usually extracted from the air during combustion.
It can be quite fun when even a medium size capacitor explodes..
… for instance, if you accidentally wire it in reverse polarity..
Of course, not something I would have ever done ! 😉
That’s because you’ve shorted the leads, right? What would happen if, say, a pointed plastic or glass or some other insulator punctured one?
If you wire a cap in the wrong polarity, and apply a current… things happen.
I know this from experience. 🙂
Confirm. But only with polarized capacitors.
Interesting video, but all are shorting all the power through material, electrically. How does that compare to deforming or breaking the capacitor, not shorting the leads?
The capacity of capacitors is a linear function of plate area and an inverse function of plate separation. The objective is to get as much area into the smallest space as possible with the smallest spacing between the plates. Any mechanical damage once charged will result in an instant short circuit and resulting explosion.
There are plenty of videos of exploding capacitors.
And in batteries the plates (electrodes) are separated by liquid gel, preventing their contact, but internal shorts still can develop, either as result of metallic dendrites or due to mechanical damage.
Even the best capacitors have an energy density that is a minute fraction of a battery.
Simple electronics.
I did research back in the 80s on the gold foil super caps that were introduced. They did not do well.
A 1 F capacitor charged to 1 V has 1 J of energy stored.
J = 1/2 C x V^2
A 1 F capacitor has a volume of roughly 20 cm^3
A 1 Ahr 3 V battery has 3 W-hours or 10.8 kJ
A AA cell is about 7K cm^3 or 350 times the volume of the 1 F capacitor but 10,000 times the energy.
The danger of extremely large capacitors is electrocution if mishandled.
There are capacitors that have exploded. Had one in a bench power supply go on me. I’ve also been around battery ventings and an exploding lead acid car battery.
The danger is the quantity of energy and the energy density. Two different concerns. When talking about that much energy, capacitor or battery/cell, you might as well be handling TNT or nitro glycerin. It is dangerous.
FYI, I work on rocket launch crews now. Those are dangerous, too.
We need to replace ‘tire fire’ and ‘dumpster fire’ in our lexicons (for when something is a complete and utter disaster) with ‘EV battery fire’.
Are lithium batteries going to become the renewables own petard?
And if these fires occur too often, who is going to want to work in one of these factories?
the democrats will ‘import workers’ (fly in Venezuelans) to fulfill this vital economic need.
“fly in Venezuelans”
Only if there is an apartment block nearby they can occupy…
… regardless of who is currently living there.
Or on an EV assembly line? Or on a ship loaded with EVs?
I like it.
Reminds of the final scene in the movie Planet of the Apes when Charlton Heston realizes the inhabitants of earth destroyed earth. Are we on the same path with “Net Zero?”
Not really. Earth is much bigger than that and will recover. But the economies embracing “Net Zero” will get hurt.
I suspect Britannia will see living standards drop significantly more than they already have.
Will it ever recover.. wouldn’t hold your breath !
Further evidence there’s no such thing as clean energy.
And no such thing as Net Zero, which is just an expensive slogan to subjugate the malinformed screwed over people.
Net Zero is accomplished when the economy goes to zero and we all have nothing and are happy.
Where is this “happiness” supposed to come from??
It is encouraging to see the correct terminology being used. Lithium batteries are chemical bombs. Their disintegration starts with melt-down that can lead to explosion. Put enough of them together and you make decent bomb that will explode.
Not to say the Li-Ion batteries would not explode, but since it is a chemical plant, there is a possibility they had other flammable chemicals there, such as organic solvents or propane tanks, or other potentially mightily explosive items like cryogenically cooled tanks.
Analysis of alternatives is correct, but if the other source started a fire, it is highly probable that the Lithium cells added to it.
The chemical processing required to recycle lithium batteries takes more energy than it took to mine and refine the battery constituents originally. Just like windmills. If recycling lithium batteries is performed, then you are digging an even deeper thermodynamic hole. Prove me wrong, show me a single EV manufacturer using recycled feedstock in their batteries.
An interesting point. I wonder if anyone has done accurate calculations on the energy debit.
Extra firemen, police, medics required for these types of fires – must be all the green jobs we were promised
They serve to diminish collateral damage. Their cost is for free to the Owners
It looks like that plant will take a lot of money to put in a hazardous waste landfill, also not paid by Owners
Any new plant will relocate outside the US. What sick community would want it, except for lots of under the table money?
Must be.
Coming to a town near you!
Oh well just build a new recycling plant and get it insured.again. Simples really.
There’s a lot we can learn from this fire with the world’s best fire detection and prevention system (before the website was taken down)-
Lithium Battery Fire: Missouri’s Largest Recycling Plant Explodes!
Wayback Machine
There is an APP for that
Here is the plan for safer critical mineral recovery from lithium ion batteries:
This seems better than burning down the “recycling” facilities, does it not?
/sarc (but not entirely!)
The best way is to never build them in the first place.
Yes, as I mentioned above. Coal is a lot cheaper and far less toxic when burned.
How about 100 40-ton grid batteries going up?
https://www.cfact.org/2024/10/01/grid-scale-battery-fires-loom-large/
Many jurisdictions automatically incorporate NFPA Articles into local law, but it can take years to develop new standards. I also seem to recall from years back that electric utilities are typically exempt from the NFPA.
Indeed, thank you for trying to highlight the dangers (I was caught in the I-15 traffic nightmare in the Mojave Desert in July).
There are battery complexes off I-10 with 3 foot spacing. Insane.
How about a GUM Karlo?
All the best,
Bill
P.s., I hope American voters dig us out of this hole tomorrow
Since these battery fires are so highly exothermic, some enterprising engineers should design a boiler system to capture that energy and convert it to….electricity, rather than wasting exorbitant amounts of resources (and energy) to recycle these materials back into power packs for the rolling ”people toasters”.
Yes, see my comment above. 🙂
I wonder what the work practices are in a facility like this. Anything that triggers the fire suppression sprinklers is going to be catastrophic unless they are taking stringent methods to isolate the materials. And I’ve worked in some dangerous manufacturing for over a decade, would not want to work in this type of facility. The risk is too great.
Mr. Layman here.
Honest question.
When lithium ion batteries are recycled, what are the end products?
I mean, steel, plastic can be recycled into a product that can be reused/reformed into something useful and profitable.
What about recycled lithium ion batteries?
They attempt to get the lithium, rare earths, and other valuable metals and minerals out of the cells and into a reusable form.
This allegedly is to provide rootstock for building new batteries.
I think all of the “grid scale battery storage” facilities and “battery recycling plants” and wind farms and solar farms should be located in Beverly Hills, since most of the people who want EVs and “green” (not) energy live there.
Let them all breath deeply when the inevitable fires occur.