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How to fight a lithium battery fire (2023 Update)

So you own an electric car with a sizeable lithium-based battery, how do you fight a battery fire? Experience with fighting electric car fires is not encouraging because you can't cut off the supply of oxygen to the fire like you can with a carbon fuel such as gasoline - the chemistry of all lithium battery variants supplies its own oxygen.

There was a very large (mega) battery fire in OZ that took three days to extinguish. The fire really wasn't extinguished, just all of the lithium was consumed. Firefighters were given advice on how to fight the fire by Tesla, the batterie's designer, and UGL, the installer

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“They are difficult to fight because you can’t put water on the mega packs … all that does is extend the length of time that the fire burns for.”

Firefighters have taken advice from experts including Tesla, the battery’s creators, and UGL, who are installing the battery packs.

“The recommended process is you cool everything around it so the fire can’t spread and you let it burn out,” Beswicke said.

It is somewhat like fighting large forest fires: you wait for Nature to put it out naturally with rain and/or snow, except worse. A fire in aircraft lithium battery pack will likely result in the complete destruction of the plane, even if it is on the ground when the fire started. If the fire starts while airborne your only option is to bail out (if you are not incapacitated by smoke first like the Taurus Electro glider fatal accident in NZ

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Reply to
Flyguy
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will be problems with that, I think. For instance, can somebody calculate how much will a common electric car battery rise temperature of a few cubic meters of water.

Reply to
LM

Le 05/09/2021 à 05:51, Flyguy a écrit :

I think the real problem concerns recycling and building of such batteries. In their useful life they are not concentrated in a single place and this should help a lot. Big storage arrays seems a bad idea anyway.

Reply to
bilou

Gas car fires often aren't trivial to fight, either:

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Reply to
bitrex

The best way is to walk (or run) away and call the fire department.

Reply to
John S

I'm not sure why anyone is worried more about the few cases of lithium ion batteries on a plane when there is so much more potential explosive power in the fuel. I suppose some hysterical people expect that never causes any problems?

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While looking for this I also found reports of jet skis exploding, boilers exploding and let's not forget, !CARS! exploding. Cars kill a great many people, including the occupants and not always because of crashes.

I guess some people just want to live their lives in fear.

Reply to
Rick C

And some people flirt with danger. Fear is a primal warning of possible impending death. Stay there and ignore it at your peril. While you do, I will vacate the area at high speed.

Reply to
John S

The discussion is for potential electric plane. There wouldn't be much fuel on board, but much bigger batteries. Perhaps we should talk about ejectable car batteries first.

Updated list of fire: There is only one known case (not started with battery) for the Leaf. 21 for Tesla. 14 for Bolt.

Leaf:

  1. Sep 1, 2015, Flower Mound, Texas

Tesla: 1. Oct 1, 2013, MS, Kent, Washington 2. Oct 18, 2013, MS, in Merida, Mexico 3. Nov 6, 2013, MS, Murfreesboro, Tennessee 4. Nov 15, 2013, MS, Irvine, California 5. Jan 1, 2016, MS, Norway 6. Aug 15, 2016, MS 90D, Biarritz, France 7. Aug 25, 2017, MX Lake Forest, California, 8. May 8, 2018, MS 9. May 10, 2018, MS, Monte Ceneri. Germany

  1. Jun 16, 2018, MS, Los Angeles, California
  2. Feb 8, 2019, MS, Pittsburgh. PA
  3. Feb 24, 2019, MS, Davie, Florida
  4. Feb 24, 2019, MX, Lake Champlain.
  5. Apr 21, 2019, MS, Shanghai, China.
  6. May 4, 2019, MS,
  7. May 13, 2019, MS, Hong Kong.
  8. Jun 1, 2019, MS, Belgium.
  9. Aug 10, 2019, M3, Moscow, Russia
  10. Nov 12, 2019, MX, Chester, England.
  11. Jan 19, 2021, M3, Shanghai, China
  12. Jul 2021, MS Plaid

Bolt: 1. Mar 17, 2019, M18 – Belmont, MA 2. Sep 20, 2019, M17 – Kiev, Ukraine 3. Jun 29, 2020, M19 – Miami, FL 4. Jul 4, 2020, M19 – Vienna, VA 5. Jul 25, 2020, M17 – Maplecrest, NY (?) 6. Jul 30, 2020, M17 – Temecula, California 7. Aug 5, 2020, M19 – Tracy, CA 8. Oct 6, 2020, M19 – Port St Lucie, FL 9. Oct 16, 2020, M19 – Jacksonville, FL

  1. Oct 21, 2020, M19 – Monroe, NJ
  2. Nov 1, 2020, M17 – Langenfeld, Germany
  3. May 1, 2021, M19 – Ashburn, VA
  4. Jul 1, 2021, M19 – Thetford, VT
  5. Jul 2, 2021, M19 – Bound Brook, NJ
Reply to
Ed Lee

There are far fewer electric plane fires because there are far fewer electric planes. But the rate of electric plane fires is actually far higher than cars. This is partly due to the requirement that they make the batteries more compact with little to no insulation between cells which promotes propagation of thermal runaway between cells.

Reply to
Flyguy

Another difference is that most vehicle fires are stationary. So, just dropping it won't help. It needs to be self-propelled smart torpedo (sorry, battery) that will avoid targets rather than to acquire them.

Reply to
Ed Lee

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