Battery explosions

Interesting twist on this is back in 2014 when LiIon battery (drill) powered ascenders happened the comment was raised of a battery going off and frying your textile life support PPE (rope and saddle) and how it was similar to the largely considered/controlled risk of gasoline going off from a saw or gas ascender and doing similar. I vaguely thought that having my battery hanging off my hip/saddle was less directly lethal than having it near the main rope attachment. And unclickable from there like from a drill (funny coincidence :)).

I should find the shop security vid of a cart retrofit going off and those guys wheeling it asap out the door to melt down. Bit like fireworks. And the guy just finished having his face right over the pack before it started to go bad.

In my first post I might not have made it emphasized enough that the box vent has got to go out where it won't fry something else - tough to achieve.

Edit - Imagine the warning sticker "Don't park near this vent because you might get toxic flame blasted" :)
 
Last edited:
Bart_ said:
In my first post I might not have made it emphasized enough that the box vent has got to go out where it won't fry something else - tough to achieve.
Click to expand...
That crossed my mind right after the venting was brought up. Only thing I can think of is a storage locker as an island venting to outside. That would be a bit much and contrary for the need to keep them in a climate controlled environment. Pick your poison I guess
 
Funny note on batteries - I ordered three replacement Sena batteries online, they were delivered today. Individually boxed and shipped, with warning stickers all over the boxes. I think the packaging was a bit excessive though, wouldn’t dropping all three in a padded envelope be enough?
 

Attachments

  • IMG_9160.webp
    IMG_9160.webp
    152.6 KB · Views: 8
Couldn't find the impressive old fire vid but apparently someone's dog gnawed on a battery and set off a fire!

 
Last edited:
Reach said:
Funny note on batteries - I ordered three replacement Sena batteries online, they were delivered today. Individually boxed and shipped, with warning stickers all over the boxes. I think the packaging was a bit excessive though, wouldn’t dropping all three in a padded envelope be enough?
Click to expand...
I ordered some batteries this December and they came, in individual boxes with enough warning stickers on each that the cargo plane was probably overweight. Maybe they know something we don't about these things. Anyway this thread is giving me pause for sober second thought looking at the rows and rows of all kind of Li tool batteries I seem to have assembled over the years. In our northern climate, outside storage isn't practical (nor really is venting outside) so here we are - all this stuff is in occupied space for winter anyway.
You'd think that someone would have come up with, say, a metal cabinet for storage with it's own (gunsafe??), maybe, heat detector or IR detector that could be hooked up into the smoke alarm circuit that is code nowadays. Hmmm . . .
Good thread !

Addenda: Maybe this is something that TCIA/ John Ball or others should have a look at.
From one paper: "The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA, 2019) reports that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission identified over 25,000 overheating or fire incidents involving more than 400 types of lithium-battery-powered consumer products over a 5-year period." Ouch !

Addenda II: In thinking about the photo's above and the comment I made as well, some of the older literature I have read says that the residues (soot/ smoke/ burned material) of Li battery thermal runaways can contain really toxic heavy metals etc. So I also wonder then if folks shouldn't have really good PPE when trying to salvage anything left over from one of these "fires", cleanup, etc. As I recall, the residues were not just like ash etc. from a wooden structure fire at all and City Fire Departments have had a time with things like decontaminating their own response equipment and the City/ Town decontaminating the area where the fire occurred (London UK bus fires as I recall). Hmmm . . .

Always tuff trying to figure out what to do about low probability/ high consequence events.
 
Last edited:
ghostice said:
I ordered some batteries this December and they came, in individual boxes with enough warning stickers on each that the cargo plane was probably overweight. Maybe they know something we don't about these things. Anyway this thread is giving me pause for sober second thought looking at the rows and rows of all kind of Li tool batteries I seem to have assembled over the years. In our northern climate, outside storage isn't practical (nor really is venting outside) so here we are - all this stuff is in occupied space for winter anyway.
You'd think that someone would have come up with, say, a metal cabinet for storage with it's own, maybe, heat detector or IR detector that could be hooked up into the smoke alarm circuit that is code nowadays. Hmmm . . .
Good thread !
Click to expand...
It does make one think, but apparently the low pressure atmosphere of an airplane is what tends to cause the issues, and of course if one does catch fire in an airplane it’s hard to fight a fire deep in the cargo compartment…

The storage cabinet with alarm is an interesting idea.

My father’s solar company has a whole warehouse of big batteries, and has never had an issue; recently they had to replace a battery someone shot with a .30-06… That one worried them a bit, it got a ride straight to the recycler on an open trailer in case it did something bad.

Last year, there was a fire at a battery company near here. Apparently they had a small, sealed shed full of cheap Chinese LiIon batteries, and they set themselves on fire. Took two days for half the fire companies in the county to put the fire out, then the batteries, thrown in a big dumpster in a field for safety, lit themselves back on fire three times across the next month. Way too much excitement for me, I’ll stay away from the cheap batteries for sure!
 
Last edited:
The vid I couldn't find had a great mixture of hissing venting cells and popping fireworks cells.

The original kick butt A123 18650 cells used by Dewalt were the first more volatile chemistry. The industry has since moved to the less volatile LiFePo with iron formulation.


Cell phones and small things use pouch or bag style cells that never explode, they just puff up and vent. Usually only the cylindrical cells can pop and that's what bigger drill, saw etc packs are filled with. Just saw a $6500 battery riding mower at home depot - yeah, get that parked in the garage right away. Not!
 
Bart_ said:
The vid I couldn't find had a great mixture of hissing venting cells and popping fireworks cells.

The original kick butt A123 18650 cells used by Dewalt were the first more volatile chemistry. The industry has since moved to the less volatile LiFePo with iron formulation.


Cell phones and small things use pouch or bag style cells that never explode, they just puff up and vent. Usually only the cylindrical cells can pop and that's what bigger drill, saw etc packs are filled with. Just saw a $6500 battery riding mower at home depot - yeah, get that parked in the garage right away. Not!
Click to expand...
Yeah, I watch our neighbours in back do about a third of their backyard lawn with a double battery mower, then it charges overnight, then they do another third and then the third day finish the rest. For us, Toro and a complex mixture of naturally occurring hydrocarbons is still our friend when chewing the hay. Battery saw or T2511. The latter still might be just as easy (and lighter?). For me, increasingly, beginning to be court's still in session on all this stuff. Love the battery saw sometimes, but increasingly the other baggage weighs at times (making sure you have the right kind of batteries with you, chargers, outdoor temperatures, making sure everything is plugged in/ charged v.s. just a jug of a complex mixture of naturally occurring hydrocarbons). :-)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New threads New posts

Kask Stihl NORTHEASTERN Arborists Wesspur TreeStuff.com Teufelberger Westminster X-Rigging Teufelberger
Back
Top Bottom