Li-ion battery warehouse fire put out with Portland cement (2021) | Hacker News Reader

Li-ion battery warehouse fire put out with Portland cement (2021)

abc7chicago.com

132 pointstomohawk167 comments

This was in 2021; it appears the fire was extinguished by July 11 [1], investigated by Vice later that year [2], and seems to still be being cleaned up by US EPA [3].

1. https://www.ehs.com/2021/07/morris-lithium-battery-fire-high...

2. https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vj73/everyone-thought-the-...

3. https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-resumes-cleanup-hazardo...

What chemicals are in lithium batteries that are toxic?

I was under the impression that while lithium batteries were dangerous due to explosion/flame risk, the actual ingredients weren't particularly toxic?

Oxidization changes the multiple chemicals into different chemicals so the question would have to be what are those resulting chemicals not in the batteries, but after oxidization. Also, you have the other stuff being stored in the warehouse burning at the same time, and firefighters dumping on who knows what else beyond what was mentioned, and how all those chemicals react with each other with heat to form even more chemicals. A lot going on in this story.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-09784-z

Many batteries have LiPF6 electrolytes, so HF is the big one when they combust.

And of course the most famous and common battery chemistry is still LiCo - so you've got Lithium salts and Cobalt, which you don't love to see get in ground water.

They're not too bad when they don't burn, but once they've burned, all bets are off - there are a lot of nasty byproducts.

LiPF6 = lithium hexafluorophosphate

HF = hydrogen flouride

> HF = hydrogen flouride

otherwise known as hydroflouric acid. nasty stuff indeed:

> In addition to being a highly corrosive liquid, hydrofluoric acid is also a powerful contact poison. Because of the ability of hydrofluoric acid to penetrate tissue, poisoning can occur readily through exposure of skin or eyes, or when inhaled or swallowed. Symptoms of exposure to hydrofluoric acid may not be immediately evident, and this can provide false reassurance to victims, causing them to delay medical treatment.[24] Despite having an irritating odor, HF may reach dangerous levels without an obvious odor.[5] HF interferes with nerve function, meaning that burns may not initially be painful. Accidental exposures can go unnoticed, delaying treatment and increasing the extent and seriousness of the injury.[24] Symptoms of HF exposure include irritation of the eyes, skin, nose, and throat, eye and skin burns, rhinitis, bronchitis, pulmonary edema (fluid buildup in the lungs), and bone damage.[25]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid#Health_and_s...

>> HF = hydrogen flouride

> otherwise known as hydroflouric acid. nasty stuff indeed:

Technically hydrofluoric acid is hydrogen fluoride dissolved in water.

But yes, nasty stuff, and that fine distinction doesn't matter when HF gas spreads through the air, meets biology and immediately turns into the acid on contact.

> flouride

fluoride

Doesn't anyone use a spell checker any more?

You don’t want to breathe in cement dust.

But you don't want to breathe flouric acid more than you don't want to breathe cement dust, I'd wager.

Pretty easy choice if you ask me... Id rather do the cinnamon challenge with a spoon of cement mix than breathe in the acid...

I've breathed in cement dust and HF. I'd choose cement anytime.

It doesn't take much for something to be toxic to soil, wildlife, &c.

> Lithium batteries contain potentially toxic materials including metals, such as copper, nickel, and lead, and organic chemicals, such as toxic and flammable electrolytes containing LiClO4, LiBF4, and LiPF6.

Also, from the article:

> an estimated 180,000 to 200,000 pounds of lithium ion batteries stored in the warehouse caught fire,

Almost anything human made burning at that scale will be toxic to some degree, lithium batteries aren't made of flower petals and lavender essential oil. Have you ever had a battery fire in your house ? It's nasty as fuck, even from a single small phone battery

Lavender essential oil is also toxic:

> blurred vision, difficulty breathing, burning pain in the throat, burns to the eye, confusion, decreased level of consciousness, diarrhea (watery, bloody), stomach pain, vomiting, and rash

Was the owner of the building ever held liable for all of this damage?

In case it was a poper storage facility, and the fire wasn't caused intentionally or by gross negligence, insurance covers it (speaking about Europe, no idea those kind of insurance works in the US). One of the reasosn why hazardous goods storage, especially for Li-batteries, is so hard to come by and expensive.

Lithium battery fire cannot be 'put out'- in a normal sense. A fuel tank of petrol needs oxygen to burn, and when you spray foam on it your cut off the oxygen and the fire stops.

A battery already contains energy, all the chemicals required for the reaction are already present, and once the energy release starts, sealing it from the environment does not stop the process.

Ebike and drone batteries are large enough to be properly dangerous and fire departments make noises about them but offer no solutions. A fire extinguisher large enough for a 500wh battery weighs 12 kilos - most people can barely lift that!

We have no traceability in the battery supply chain and there is no 'battery safety box' that I could readilly buy. It is not clear if an average metal furniture would contain it. And the regulator is sleeping on the job.

Firefighters struggle lifting 24.5 lbs?

Firefighters aren't 'most people'.

I'd guess that most people can lift 12kg. But lifting and wielding ain't the same.

12kg is like a two year old child or a small-to-medium sized dog.

Yes.

12kg shouldn't be much of a problem for most people, if the weight comes in the shape of a dumbbell and stuff ain't on fire.

But wielding a toddler-sized implement awkwardly in front of a fire while you are a bit panicking yourself, might be a struggle for many people.

Especially since you probably never practiced this, and you might even have to hold the thing one-handed, so you can aim with the other hand

When you get to 12kg it usually mean a cylinder and a hose. You have the cylinder with handle in one hand and the hose in other.

Fire extinguishers are easier to carry than a dumbbell. They're a tall cylinder with a handle at the top.

Also it only takes 10-30 seconds to discharge a 30lb fire extinguisher[1] with no pause. This is not a marathon.

[1] scroll down to table in https://blog.qrfs.com/66-ultimate-guide-to-fire-extinguisher...

I mean average housewife and grandpa.

Also you are not benchpressing in optimal position, you need to hold it at an awkward angle.

The main reaction in a 'lithium battery fire' is the solvent for the electrolyte vaporizing and burning.

So actually a battery can be put out by removing oxygen.

After the electrolyte has vaporised, the problem is the anode and cathode being permanently shorted, which will keep generating heat and igniting other things. I guess you can prevent the initial fire from breaking out, but if the fire has already started, it's too late.

I'm not an expert, so I could be wrong.

Most job applications for positions with any sort of physical aspect (grocery, hardware stores, maintenance) ask whether the applicant can lift 50 lbs (23 kg) over their head.

Including (I heard) semiconductor engineers. Imagine carrying dozens of kg while wearing PPE.

Not where I come from (UK) and not where I live (Norway). Can anyone else comment on how widespread this sort of requirement actually is?

Every job I've applied for that required any level of physical work had "must be able to lift 50 lbs" as a requirement. It's a little heavier than a step ladder, bags of potatoes, flour, cement and gravel are typically in that range as well. It's not an unreasonable requirement. You typically won't lift them overhead, but floor-to-shoulder is a very common lift.

I think the standard procedure in EV car fires is to just dump water on it to conduct the heat away as fast as possible, and to keep dumping water on it until the batteries can no longer self-ignite -- which can take awhile.

Possibly amateurish take: dumping water on an alkali metal seems like not a great idea (unless you want _more_ fire, in which case by all means go for it)

The good news is, water is cold (generally), doesn't combust (generally), and there is a LOT of it.

So spraying water, while it can make it spicier for a bit, allows you to suck away enough heat fast enough that it works okayish. It's the scalable, but not ideal, solution generally.

Current guidance is don't bother with anything else, just spray it until the flames stop.

I've wondered if maybe it's possible to pack batteries with a relatively harmless material that undergoes a very energy-intensive phase change. Water's the obvious choice, but it tends to drain away rather than stick around long enough to turn to steam. Maybe there's a better material, or ways to design battery cooling systems so that a burning battery turns into a very efficient steam generator, and thus can be cooled adequately with much less water.

I've also wondered if maybe EV's should be designed with an easy-to-access coolant loop. For instance, maybe you have a fixture you can connect a garden hose to in order to pump cold water through channels in the battery modules for emergency cooling. (Most EVs have liquid cooling already, so this could be in addition to that, or maybe you hook into the existing system and the already-present coolant gets flushed out.)

>Water's the obvious choice, but it tends to drain away rather than stick around long enough to turn to steam.

just add something gel-forming into the water or some fiber/dust (even just gluten flour) that absorbs a lot of water and turns into kind of watery dough.

My Tesla caught fire but at least I now have a year's supply of sourdough bread

Problem with that is, it might block the addition of more water. If the 'way in' for the water gets blocked, but the battery continues to burn.

They do this at airports. The easy answer is foam.

The problem it turns out is making large quantities of water based foam (without making it flammable somehow) is easiest when using perflourinated compounds.

Oops.

In buildings they call your hose idea a “standpipe”

The phase transition of water from liquid to gas requires an enormous amount of energy. It’s a very good substance for cooling very hot things.

It is, but I've wondered about whether there are even better materials?

Let's say you have a battery immersed in a tank of water (aside from the contacts), and you wanted to match the amount of water to the stored energy of the cell, such that, in the event that the stored energy is accidentally released, the last of the water boils away when the battery is empty.

Apparently it takes about 2.37 kwh to boil a gallon of water. That's a lot of energy, but if you have a car with an 80kwh battery pack, you'd need about 33 gallons of water, which is probably too heavy to be a realistic option.

(Granted this is oversimplistic because the energy that comes from a burning battery might be more than the electrical energy you could get out of it just by discharging it the normal way.)

I found a wikipedia article that lists joules per gram required to vaporize various substances:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enthalpy_of_vaporization

Water is way up there. Iron and aluminum are even higher, but it's hard to imagine even an EV fire being enough to vaporize large amounts of those. I don't think I'd want to be breathing that either, though given the "battery fire" scenario I guess that's already a given.

only if you have enough water.

if you don’t have enough water, it will just spread the fire

Luckily, one of the first criteria for if a place is habitable or not is ‘easy access to large quantities of water’, and building code wise, access to large enough quantities to put out fully formed full structure fires is required too.

It’s also relatively simple training and equipment wise (‘spray it with water until the bad flames stop’), and most locations have teams of people on call and ready to do it.

Not perfect, but it’s the best we’ve been able to come up with outside of specialized industrial environments. shrug

I wonder if they could add a "water flooding port" to the battery packs, to allow firefighters to hook up a water hose and flood that battery compartment directly. Seems like it'd be much more targeted/effective/efficient than trying to spray the exterior.

Teslas (and maybe others, I don't know) already have liquid cooling passages and piping leading to the batter pack. I do not know how feasible it would be to add a tap to that system.

The challenge of course is that there is a very small window of time where you might suspect the pack will catch on fire and it’s feasible to be close enough to a battery pack to be able to plug something into it, without being horribly burned because it’s on fire.

That length of time may be zero if the reason it is on fire is due to traumatic damage to the battery pack from a crash or similar.

It’s easier and less error prone to spray it from a distance. If it isn’t on fire yet, maybe it keeps it cool enough it never starts. If it is on fire, just keep spraying until the bad flames stop.

Lion (as me and others have come to call them, due to their "ferocious" nature) batteries contain no metallic lithium.

It's important to actually know the battery chemistry here. Lithium batteries contain metal lithium and as you say dumping water on them is not a good idea. Lithium-ion and lithium polymer on the other hand only contain lithium polymers that don't combust with water.

Lithium-Ion Battery Fires in Electric Vehicles - Safety Risks to Emergency Responders

https://youtu.be/J6eS6JzBn0k

Or just submerge the whole car:

https://www.firehouse.com/operations-training/news/21236083/...

Some people started setting cars on fire in a number of neighborhoods randomly in my city the last few weeks during the night. One of these fires happened next to my bedroom. First car was traditional ICE but the second car was hybrid and water was useless on it. The firefighters came up with a second truck and stopped the battery fire using a special foam.

Interesting note, the fire was propagating from the back to the floor - where I imagine most of the batteries lies - to the front engine bay but never burned in the cockpit area. I guess those battery equipped cars have some additionnal isolation to protect the passengers.

What model hybrid was that? Sounds like a great safety feature.

I know here in Germany some fire departments have recently bought "dunk tanks" for EV car fires. Essentially large swimming pools that they just throw the whole car in once it's on fire

So what happens after the next big earthquake in a place like SF?

Why would an earthquake directly cause batteries to set on fire? They are already subjected to significantly more vibration and movement in EVs

Crushing.

Big earthquake implies things like UMBs collapsing.

What are UMBs?

Upper Memory Blocks, the area between the 640 KiB and 1 MiB range that becomes available on 286+ machines in real mode once the A20 address line is no longer held low by the keyboard controller.

Thanks, I should add MEMMAKER.EXE to my earthquake kit.

No idea, but from context, maybe they meant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_Dwelling_Unit? Really weird phrasing either way.

Ureinforced Masonry Building, any firefight in SF will tell you the city is full of them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreinforced_masonry_buildin...

Ureinforced Masonry Building, any firefight in SF will tell you the city is full of them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreinforced_masonry_buildin...

I often wonder about this while hiking or riding my dirt bike out on the trails. Gas powered dirt bikes are prohibited almost everywhere due to risk of fire and chemical contamination.

However, more and more I am seeing e-bikes ripping around on hiking trails that would get me and my dirt bikes a hefty fine and impound. The risk of fire and contamination is practically the same. And these e-bikes are typically driven by the same people who would call the cops on a gas powered bike on the same trail. The irony is they ride and do peaceful yoga on trails that were made by motor vehicles whose owners were probably gentrified out of their homes. Go figure.

I’m surprised e-bikes are allowed, they’re also prohibited on the trails here and considered OHV.

Regarding fire I’d be worried about the hot exhaust on a dry 100+ day.

Most trail bikes come from the factory with spark arrestors with the major exception being cheap Chinese branded bikes.

And I don't think the temperature of the exhaust stream would be enough to light a match 6" away from the tip of the muffler. You'd have to reef on the bike and park it in a pile of dry leaves up to the exhaust header for temperature alone to start a fire.

The problem is when you dump the bike. If you dump it on a tree or a rock you can fracture the gas tank (releasing fuel) or the crankcase (releasing oil). Or if you tip the bike completely over the fuel will eventually be released. Releasing these doesn't imply fire is inevitable. You still need ignition. If a fire starts you can try to smother it.

On an electric bike the same situation applies. If you dump the bike and fracture the battery (that is often attached to the downtube of the frame) then you will have a catastrophic chemical reaction. Thermal runaway is almost guaranteed. You can't even put it out by smothering it.

Furthermore, most lithium battery controllers in consumer devices are proprietary and most consumers have no idea what their true capabilities and thresholds are. Some batteries might be inherently safer than others due to simple firmware that they don't know exists and have no visibility into. There's really no hiding the capabilities of an analog machine.

> Most trail bikes come from the factory with spark arrestors

And most riders immediately remove them because they gunk up with soot and restrict the exhaust.

It's my understanding that e-bikes which can ride on traditional "bike" trails (I'm used to this rule for bike lanes) are limited to a relatively human-accessible speed, usually 15 or 20 mph in the US. Are these e-bike riders going faster than that? If so, they might be breaking the law.

I had assumed dirt bikes were banned on these trails due to weight and speed, leading to damage to the trail, risks to other trail users and potential structural failure of the often wooden bridges. The risk of fire with a modern gasoline engine is quite small, though air quality effects are significant.

There are many people bypassing the limit using hacks or on some cheap chinese kits just by going in the settings (usually a button combo, knowledge widely available on the internet).

Yes it is illegal but in the same way the 50cc mopeds are supposed to be limited at 45kph (27mph) and all the kids always modified them to go faster. I believe there has always been more unrestricted 50cc mopeds than legal ones in the street. Only some old people kept them restricted.

Most people are willing to take the risk of not getting insurance coverage and a fine once in a while to gain a few minutes per day and be the king of the road. Most only have third party insurance anyway and a bicycle or a moped don't usually create that much physical damage to other vehicules. It only becomes ugly when people hit pedestrians but thankfully and for obvious reasons it is a much rarer event than car drivers doing it.

50cc moped is over 2000W, thats almost 10 times the power of a typical ebike at 250W

> The risk of fire and contamination is practically the same.

Source? There's very little risk of an e-bike catching fire unless you're charging the battery. Most of the risk will be at home.

Battery fires gets a lot of attention because they're a new thing, but they're far safer than ICE alternatives in almost all circumstances. At least that's what the fire department here in Norway says, and they have pretty good experience with EVs by now.

You obviously don't trail ride.

When you ride trails you sometimes fall down. Sometimes you catch a branch with your bars. Sometimes your bike lands on rocks or logs.

The down tube of an ebike frame is often where the batteries are located. This area takes a lot of abuse from the front wheel and is in perfect position to take damage during frontal impact.

Look up my YT @Platinum_Racing to see an example of terrain that could very easily destroy an ebike or gas bike.

> Gas powered dirt bikes are prohibited almost everywhere due to risk of fire and chemical contamination.

All gas powered bikes generate heat and pollution. (dry grass + hot pipes for example)

Only defective ebikes will generate heat and pollution

> there is no 'battery safety box' that I could readilly buy

Take a look at Bat-Safe LiPo boxes. They are designed to contain the heat and prevent your entire house from going up from a drone battery fire.

okay, their largest box is actually big enough to deal with am ebike battery, this could work!

Bought one of these a while ago, super happy with the peace of mind these things provide. (I am using it mostly for drone batteries). I hope I'll never have to find out how well it actually works first hand though.

> A fire extinguisher large enough for a 500wh battery weighs 12 kilos - most people can barely lift that!

Almost everyone can lift that overhead. 90% of men and more than 50% of women can lift a bit more than twice that overhead. It's a common job requirement.

There would have to be something really wrong for an adult to struggle lifting 12kg. That's a large watermelon, and unlike the melon, the fire extinguisher got a handle.

Handheld fire extinguishers top out at that weight - because the vast majority of people will be able to use them and it's better to have two than make them any bigger.

Where on earth do you get 12 kg watermelons? Genuine curious, the ones imported here in Denmark I would guess are big if they're around 3 kg.

Warmer countries. E.g. in Italy the common water melons are at least half a meter long.

The same in Portugal. Ours can be very big.

I guess we can conclude a watermelon is a really bad weight reference unit!

  $ units 
  You have: 1 watermelon
  You want: grapes
        * 907.19
        / 0.0011023

Is there anything "units" can't convert?

  $ units 
  You have: 1 VIM user
  You want: Emacs users
        St4ck 0verflow...

Sitting even further north than Denmark, the OP did say that their melons are imported. Although it's possible to grow them in Denmark (especially in a greenhouse) perhaps it's not commercially viable.

Regardless, I guess the OP just needs to find a better grocer, local "fruit mongers" up here in frigid Sweden certainly routinely handle watermelons that are way bigger than 3 kg. :)

I get them from my garden but I weigh them in pounds. Larger ones can grow in excess of 40 lbs (close to 20 kg).

Am from the Southeastern United States.

> ...I would guess are big if they're around 3 kg

Before making a guess, try to weight them. I have hard time imagining watermelon (watermelon is the green thing unlike yellow melon) with only 3kg :) Your full water kettle already weights 2+kg.

In Istanbul the watermelons we get from the grocery store are about 4kg, the ones we buy from the road-side watermelon trucks in the summer can be 10-15kg (if their scales aren't rigged).

First source I found claims 9-11kg[1]

1: https://www.whataboutwatermelon.com/index.php/2018/08/how-he...

> 12 kilos - most people can barely lift that!

Not that I'm disagreeing with your overall point, but this I find particularly surprising? My electric scooter weighs 14 kilograms and I carry it everywhere.

That said, adding an extra 12 kilos to my backpack would be annoying, for sure.

Huh. I add 15kg of weight plates to my backpack, for fun. And I walk to work.

Huh, I put 30kg of lead on each leg for fun when hiking, when jogging to work, anytime, really. Plus that heavy backpack, of course!

I considered doing that, but it was more easier to just gain 15kg of weight to my actual body.

12kg is 26 pounds. Most people can hold a bowling ball, which weights about half that, in one hand without too much difficulty.

In doubt, take two metal buckets, fill both of them half with sand, and when a lithium device starts smoking put it in one bucket and smother it with sand, or at least place the charger in the bucket. Friend of mine does that with e-cigarette batteries.

I think the commercial aircraft solution is to just put them in jugs of water.

A 5 gallon (18.9 L) jug of water weighs... well, almost 19 kilos, and most people have no problem lifting one.

>Ebike and drone batteries are large enough to be properly dangerous and fire departments make noises about them but offer no solutions.

A suitable fireproof containment bag + fire-resistant gloves is about $1200 AUD (Brimstone Preventer [1], but I'm sure alternatives are available. This one is small phone/tablet sized and rated for 10k mAh). But most people won't purchase a < $100 fire extinguisher, let alone a battery fire containment device.

>A fire extinguisher large enough for a 500wh battery weighs 12 kilos - most people can barely lift that!

SafeWork Australia (our national OSHA body) recommend loads be kept below about ~16 to 20kg for a single person without mechanical assistance[2] (or up to 55kg with), and most packaging for heavy boxes recommends two person lift starting around 25 to 36kg. 12kg should be trivial for most adults.

[1] https://www.powdersafe.com.au/fire-containment-bag-small-tab...

[2] https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/system/files/documents/...

Yes, proper ones are super-expensive. I’ve seen people also use ammo cases with vents cut out, but those won’t stop gases and might actually inadvertently function as a flame thrower.

The standard weight (derived by US NIOSH studies) that can be lifted in workplaces is 30 kg, hence most heavy packages are 25 kg (think of a bag of cement/plaster/etc.) in most EU, see:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31465982

> This Bag Has Contained 10,000 mAh Thermal Runaway Events.

Is it just me, or is their choice to use mAh—a meaningless unit in this context—a major red flag? Five figures for a bag, and they can’t even get their units right? Is there some “standard voltage” of which I’m not aware?

> Our bags were tested on 4 separate occasions with an overheated laptop, each containing a 3,500mAh - 4500mAh Lithium-Ion battery. The computers melted and burned during these 1 hour tests. The bags showed zero exterior damage. The pull over flaps combined with our carbon liner also absorbed a significant amount of smoke.

That’s meaningless unless we know the voltage. Amp-hours don’t measure energy.

> Tests were conducted with an overheated laptop and cell phone battery (combined capacity of 8,000 mAh- twice as much power as a typical laptop). Our bag passed this test with 100% containment.

Amp-hours don’t measure power—that’d be watts. Neither are measures of energy. This is misleading at best.

Maybe I’m being pedantic, but if I’m paying five figures for a bag and trusting my life with this company, I think it’s fair to expect technical correctness in the product description. This reads like a scam—maybe it isn’t, but the wording is far from reassuring.

> Is it just me, or is their choice to use mAh—a meaningless unit in this context—a major red flag? Five figures for a bag, and they can’t even get their units right? Is there some “standard voltage” of which I’m not aware?

Most lithium-based rechargeable cells are nominally between 3.2 and 3.8 volts and are rated in mAh[1]. I would much prefer that they were rated in watt-hours, but they are not.

1: I've seen LMOs with nominal voltages as high as 3.8; LiFePO4 are Nominally 3.2; I think there are some exotic electrode chemistries that are nominally under 3V, but 3.2-3.8 is a fairly solid range for the nominal voltage; voltages at full charge and "empty" will be higher and lower respectively.

> But most people won't purchase a < $100 fire extinguisher, let alone a battery fire containment device.

$1,100 to contain fire from a phone? No-one is buying it because that's is a terrible deal!

An E-bike battery is like 20x larger, is a containment for e-bike going to cost as much as a car?

But yeah let's blame the consumer, the industry can't be at fault!

Also I had a fire extinguisher, they have an expiration date and now I don't have one.

Might be different for various lithium batteries but here is what Tesla's Emergency Response Guide recommends:

USE WATER TO FIGHT A HIGH VOLTAGE BATTERY FIRE. If the battery catches fire, is exposed to high heat, or is generating heat or gases, use large amounts of water to cool the battery. It can take between approximately 3,000-8,000 gallons (11,356-30,283 liters) of water, applied directly to the battery, to fully extinguish and cool down a battery fire; always establish or request additional water supply early. If water is not immediately available, use CO2, dry chemicals, or another typical fire-extinguishing agent to fight the fire until water is available.

NOTE: Tesla does not recommend the use of foam on electric vehicles.

Apply water directly to the battery. If safety permits, lift or tilt the vehicle for more direct access to the battery (see chapter 2). Water may be applied from a safe distance ONLY if a natural opening (such as a vent or opening from a collision) already exists. Do not open the battery for the purpose of cooling it.

Tesla does not recommend placing the vehicle in a large container full of water. The use of a Thermal Imagery Camera or Infrared (TIC or IR) is recommended to monitor battery temperatures during the cooling process. Continue to use water until the battery has reached ambient temperatures or below, indicated by the thermal imagery camera. When utilizing a thermal imaging camera, allow enough time, once the application of water has stopped, to allow for heat within the battery to transfer to the battery enclosure.

https://www.tesla.com/firstresponders

Source (pg 25): https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/Model_3_...

> Tesla does not recommend placing the vehicle in a large container full of water.

I wonder why? It's what the fire brigade here has settled on and it seems to be thoroughly effective at avoiding re-ignition.

Car is totaled.

It's gonna be totaled in either case I imagine. Can hardly imagine the battery catching fire without somehow damaging the rest of the car.

"When we smothered it with the concrete, we're not 100% sure that this thermal runaway is not continuing," Chief Steffes said. "It is probably continuing and hopefully it is going to consume what is left of the batteries underneath then it will be over. But there is a possiblility that as this continues that it does break through this Portland cement."

That sounds more like the fire was isolated or hidden, not actually put out. But at least the cement will provide a considerable barrier.

...of course, the question is then how they will clean up --- 28 tons of cement is not exactly easy to move.

10 ton excavator and a 60 ton prime mover... Pretty easy.

There's a physical kind of easy, and there's a financial kind of easy. I've noticed they're usually at odds with each other.

It's not especially expensive.

I paid around $1800 to remove and dump 30 ecology blocks (weigh around 2 tons each).

If you do it yourself, a 10 ton excavator will cost around $500 to rent for the day.

Presumably there will also be significant containment considerations. Once you've busted it open and exposed the material to weathering, you need to have already put some plan in place that will stop it from contaminating the ground water.

Part of the problem is getting the giant, single, mass of cement into pieces resembling an ecology block. And a good portion is toxic, so no breathing while you break it up!

"I'll just put this over here, with the rest of the fire."

Wonder how long it could go? Could someday we have a Centralia-level event? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralia_mine_fire

Not with this depot; there physical scale of geological coal deposits is enormously larger than and warehouse

Wouldn’t calcium carbonate be a good and very cheap option here?

The heat of a lithium battery fire will lead to a calcination reaction and suck up heat and turn the limestone into cement and co2. The cement and water along with sand might form a concrete-y slurry?

Why on earth do you move 28 tonnes of cement from southern England to the US to put out a fire!

I am of course joking - badly.

Portland is in Dorset (UK) and is where the eponymous stuff was first extracted along with stone.

This is a novel way to put out fires but a logical one if the temperatures are right. Conc can burn if it's too hot - and it sets/cures with an exothermic reaction. That's why you have to pour it carefully in huge quantities (think dams).

I thought that was funny. Nerdy, but funny.

I also am puzzles by the viability of using exothermic cement to smother a rxn

Perhaps they had loads of the stuff lying around and found a use for it but conc doesn't work how most people think it does.

It is a chemical reaction when you mix and pour it and it does not simply dry out. That's why it works underwater if you are careful to stop currents from winnowing out the cement from the aggregate. It also gives off a lot of heat in volume when curing if you are not careful.

Portland cement isn't called Portland cement because it comes from Portland. It is called that because when set it looks like the stone that could be quarried from Portland. It wasn't originally extracted from Portland.

It's a shame LiFePo4 didn't become the standard

lower capacity but doesn't burn (well not easily)

This is from over a year ago, but it would be very interesting to read a more recent update.

From April of this year:

> Today, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will resume cleanup of hazardous and potentially hazardous substances remaining after the June 29, 2021, lithium battery fire at 900 E. Benton St., Morris, Illinois. The Agency estimates the cleanup will take five to six months.

> The building housed more than 500,000 pounds of batteries, including more than 140,000 pounds of lithium batteries

https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-resumes-cleanup-hazardo...

Wow, that's a lot. I wonder if the other 360,000 pounds or so were lead acid?

Off topic... What's the best way to easily recycle these batteries? I normally disassemble my old phones and securely dispose of the chips (for my privacy), but the batteries are glued in with a strong adhesive. Just trying to remove them can start a fire. I think most people just throw the old phones in the trash, but I don't like to do that. It's bad for the environment and potentially dangerous to trash workers.

It seems that phone manufacturers should make the batteries easy to remove, replace and recycle. Not sure why they do not do this.

Home Depot has drop offs for old batteries, but last time I was there they told me they were for power tool batteries only now.

My local waste transfer station has a dropoff for lithium batteries, presumably they send them off to be recycled but who knows.

I take mine to the local dump. They have an electronics recycling drop off, which is free.

My city has a recycling center for household products, but it requires the use of a motor vehicle. I have been unsuccessful in using taxi or ride-sharing services to drop off items. Unfortunately, the inflexible vehicle requirement is a deal breaker for me and many of my neighbors.

> it requires the use of a motor vehicle

as in "it's miles away from the next bus stop, so walking is impractical", or as in "if you don't show up in a motor vehicle, we don't let you in"?

Probably out of town. And even in town, it's one thing to walk to it with a dead phone and another to walk with a dead TV :)

Some recycling centres in my country don't allow entry on foot. They'll allow entry on a motorbike, don't know about a bicycle.

I speculate it's because they often have hours-long queues, and people in cars might decide to park and walk past the queue, if it was allowed, which could get chaotic.

Or perhaps the rules were just written by someone who hadn't considered non-car-owners.

A lot of them also do curbside recycling once or twice a year for electronics and large appliances. Mine does, but I don't like batteries sitting around where I'll forget about them and my local dump is right across the street from a Home Depot, so I drop them off when I usually go to Home Depot.

In Norway most supermarkets have a box for used batteries, broken light bulbs, fluorescent tubes as well as a reverse vending machine for drinks cans and bottles.

Shops that sell electrical goods (computers, audiovisual, cookers, etc.) have to be willing to accept electrical goods for recycling even if they don't sell that specific model or even brand. So a lot more people are within a reasonable distance of a place to recycle quite a few things.

Perhaps stores elsewhere could do the same.

Also, I think Wallmart and Sam's club have recycling collection points.

My local Best Buy takes old electronics for free. Haven't found any other place. The local dump charges per pound. I'm sure most people just throw it all in the trash. Not a good situation we're in - so many things are labeled as requiring special disposal, but there's this sort of wink wink nudge nudge that the labels will be ignored.

Just consider the whole phone to be the 'battery case'.

Factory reset them then sell them on Facebook or local classifieds.

People will pay good coin for a used phone in good nick. Or a used anything, really. I personally just paid around $50 USD for an iPad Mini 2, and during the pandemic I dropped around $150 USD on a 2015 MacBook with a broken screen.

Some of the stuff people put into hard rubbish blows my mind.

Even if the facilities don't exist we can store them in remote areas right. Maybe put each in a fireproof bag.

I'm not an expert but isn't one huge advantage of batteries is they are mostly solid so unlike c02 which disperses in the air we can store them in one place that doesn't cause harm.

For EV batteries couldn't we just put them in a fire proof, water proof bag or container until the battery is ready for processing

If you drain the battery to zero charge first I think it's pretty safe

I dropped off my last lithium laptop battery at Best Buy.

At my previous work we had a battery fire when a subcontractor first turned on a brand new large UPS in our building.

Firefighters put out the fire by pouring cement over it (after we all evacuated the building).

These were lead acid battery.

Someone likes green Menards buckets: https://response.epa.gov/site/site_profile.aspx?site_id=1543... https://abc7chicago.com/morris-fire-update-battery/10853284/

The first link has a good picture of the packs. Looks like lots of good cells left!

July 1, 2021

Stupid question, has there been attempts at absorbing heat from fires (to power compressors or fans or anything helping stopping the fire) ?

I'm wondering, in a world where we use LiPo batteries to store seasonal grid level power from renewables (i.e. overproduce from solar in summer and store til winter), how big will the battery facilities be? And how bad would the fire be as a result?

It's not immediately obvious to me that these will be hugely safer than nuclear plants. Especially since LiPo battery fires seem to be much more frequent than nuclear plant incidents.

> where we use LiPo batteries to store seasonal grid level power from renewables

Can we build enough LiPo batteries to store energy at that scale? Not so sure.

Yeah I'm not sure either but that's the usual comparison point.

Depends on the facility design: whether it's possible for the whole place to go up at once, or if it's divided into sections that are isolated from each other. Even individual batteries and cells can be isolated from each other if there's enough space.

Space and weight, and firefighting ability are much less of a constraint in these types of facilities than they are in an EV battery.

Still, there's some rate at which these things ignite, the main choice seems to be lots of small fires vs few large ones. Firefightability matters for sure but I'd guess is second order?

What's the total expected number of LiPo fires per GW of base load, assuming intermittent renewables and grid storage?

Chernobyl was extinguished by tons of sand and boron.

It was thought by some that the core fire was extinguished by a combined effort of helicopters dropping more than 5,000 tonnes (11 million pounds) of sand, lead, clay, and neutron-absorbing boron onto the burning reactor. It is now known that virtually none of these materials reached the core.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

Sure can't put out a nuclear fire but the effort did do a lot to minimize burning radioactive carbon from getting out beyond the site. Its all they really could do. I was wondering why more cities don't try smothering battery fires with sand.

> I was wondering why more cities don't try smothering battery fires with sand.

Because it is much more annoying to clean the street afterwards than foam and water.

Easier than rebuilding a city block though.

From 2021

anyone know if it was lifepo4 chemistry?

I was wondering the same. From the article it sounds like it was just a random assortment of lithium-ion batteries that someone was storing with the intention of turning into a large solar-connected battery, so probably a mix of cell chemistries.

Reminds me of the Chernobyl disaster.

Why? They don't seem related in any way, beyond there being a hot thing.

He might be thinking of where they poured boron sand on it, or built a graphite topped concrete pad underneath. And then the later concrete encapsulation.

Another possibilities is that he's trying to exaggerate the dangers of lithium batteries for political or cultural reasons.

Because the heat source was hard to cool down, had to be contained using concrete, and the incident contaminated the surrounding area.

> and the incident contaminated the surrounding area.

This is not comparable, besides the words being the same.

Or Derek Lowe's classic "Sand won't save you this time."

In what way? It wasn't initially covered up, it didn't spread radiation over large areas of europe, no one died, and the cleanup will be completed within a year or so.

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