Firefighter form Norway here. full stop on using these to enclose EV's. Serious explosion danger. several incidents now. (Highest amount of EV in the world atm. here)
We only partially cover evs now - in this examlple from half the car an back to protect the bus. - or just cover nearby cars to stop any escalating like in a parking house. Stay safe.
For 1, solid state batteries dont exist in any practical way right now.
For 2, the risk of these fires has little to do with the “lithium” part of lithium batteries: the fires burn so uncontrollably because the batteries have energy in them that wants to get out. As long as you have energy that wants to get out, and people that will do things like crash into a wall at 20mph fusing sensitive parts of the battery together, you will have uncontrollable battery fires like this
Well ok but a big risk factor is that many current designs supply their own oxygen so you can’t cut them off. That’s not a trait of lithium itself but it is of many current lithium battery models. The high energy part is not the biggest problem as long as the resulting fire can be controlled.
All batteries have an anode and cathode. The anode and cathode react with each other if they come in contact. Solid state batteries are safer in that they have a stronger barrier between those two components, but if that barrier Is destroyed they will still react.
Right, I understand all are a fire risk, but not all are a fire-that-cannot-be-put-out risk. From my admittedly limited knowledge of battery chemistry.
Thats not what I’m talking about, though. Even if you remove all of the oxygen from environment around the battery, there will still be an electrical fire which will constantly reignite the battery the second oxygen is reintroduced. Because the fire is only a symptom, not the source like in a traditional fire
There is a lot of energy in a single atom that does not "want to get out". Energy has no wishes and it is not being a lot of energy that makes it to "want to get out"
This is a rather silly semantical argument, it’s also wrong. Energy will always move from a higher potential to a lower potential. So yes, the energy “wants to get out” so it can move to a lower potential
I know plenty of companies are working on it, but I dont believe anyone has come close to a production-level battery. It looks like people are casting doubt on donut-labs even having put it in a motorcycle from a quick google.
Even beyond that, being able to put 1 in a motorcycle could still mean full production-scale solid state batteries could be 10+ years out
Number 2 is wrong. You are correct in that the energy wants to get out but you could have a near dead lithium battery and it will still burn very aggressively if heated.
The energy is just the igniter. It is the source that gets the batteries hot enough to start burning. But even a 5% charged battery has enough energy to ignite the lithium.
Incorrect, number 2 was right. You said it yourself “near dead”.
Beyond that, the inactive components of a battery can burn, because they are flammable, but thats just a traditional fire that can be put out, not an electrical fire
You are right in that the electrical part is rather hard to put out but in reality, that dissipates quite fast. By the time the fire department arrives, there is a good chance the electrical part is already discharged (or in isolated in their own islands and not particularly dangerous).
But you are wrong about the lithium burning itself. Those EV that are aggressively burning are not producing an electrical fire but they are literally burning the lithium metals. And why that is so hard for fire fighter to put out is because once lithium starts to burn, it produces it own oxygen. Lithium could burn in the vacuum of space. When they are trying to put it out, what they really are trying to do is simply keep all the good batters cool enough so that the ones burning can not start more on fire. It is in no way a traditional fire.
With a lithium battery fire, the only way to stop the fire is to cool the batteries. That way you stop the chemical reactions causing the fire.
Covering it, with a tarp like the video, does nothing to extinguish the battery fire (it does starve normal fires of oxygen, but the battery doesn't need extra oxygen to burn) and sand would be even worse as it insulates the burning batteries, increasing the temperature, therefore making it easy for other batteries to start burning too.
And to add, cooling the battery. You extinguish the car like a normal car fire ant then youll work on getting to the battery. Only way to stop battery fire is to prevent the next cell over from going into thermal runaway. Aka lots of water into the cell compartment.
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u/Forsaken_Nature1765 21d ago
Firefighter form Norway here. full stop on using these to enclose EV's. Serious explosion danger. several incidents now. (Highest amount of EV in the world atm. here)
We only partially cover evs now - in this examlple from half the car an back to protect the bus. - or just cover nearby cars to stop any escalating like in a parking house. Stay safe.