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From: Jeff Layman <Jeff@invalid.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: battery fire
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 09:02:51 +0000
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On 19/01/2025 07:25, Sergey Kubushyn wrote:
> Bill Sloman <bill.sloman@ieee.org> wrote:
>> On 18/01/2025 9:37 pm, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
>>> Jeff Layman <Jeff@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 17/01/2025 21:42, Martin Brown wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Lithium ion battery fires are virtually impossible to put out - you have
>>>>> to let them burn out and use boundary cooling on the neighbouring
>>>>> modules with copious amounts of water. Looks like this one managed to
>>>>> get away from the fire fighters (which isn't supposed to happen).
>>>>
>>>> We have no problem building large windmills at sea. Why not build the
>>>> lithium storage facilities off the coast too? The capital cost would be
>>>> higher, but once built they could be maintained in a similar way to
>>>> those on land. And if one caught fire, there's plenty of water around to
>>>> put the fire out, or at least keep it under control. For even greater
>>>> safety - and expense - they could be built as submerged facilities,
>>>> where any fire could be dealt with in seconds by opening a valve and
>>>> letting sea water flood the building.
>>>
>>> I seem to remember from my chemistry lessons that lithium reacts
>>> violently with water.  Containing lithium pollution of large areas of
>>> the sea in stormy conditions (which is when catastrophic failure is most
>>> likely to occur) might be quite difficult.
>>
>> It wasn't lithium but sodium. Potassium was even worse. Lithium does
>> react in a similar way, but it schools didn't keep stocks of lithium
>> metal around fifty years ago, and probably still don't.
> 
> What that word salad was supposed to mean?
> 
> Lithium reacts violently with water. 

Really? <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxqe_ZOwsHs>
It decomposes water but there is no flame - unlike sodium and 
particularly potassium.

Furtermore, it is lighter than ANY
> liquid known to a man so it floats in EVERYTHING you could put on it. 

Let's be picky - it would sink in liquid hydrogen or liquid helium... ;-)

But
> wait, there is more -- that black crust that it gets covered with in no time
> when subjected to air is not oxide but NITRIDE. 

See the above video. It's a mixture of oxide and nitride.

Unlike sodium and potassium
> lithium readily reacts with both oxygen and nitrogen and it burns
> spectacularly even in pure nitrogen, without any oxygen present.

Really? <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4Vu9VJZFJE>
Note that even with prior heating it fails to burn. I've no doubt that 
if the temperature was high enough it would burn, but you can even get 
iron to burn (in air) if the temperature's high enough.

>> The standard technique for dealing with a lithium battery that has
>> caught fire is to flood it with lots of water. Sea water contains about
>> 0.17 ppm lithium, so lithium pollution isn't going to be a problem.
> 
> Ever seen burning lithium? Good luck to extinguish it with ANYTHING.
> Especially with lots of water... It looks like you skipped your chemistry
> classes at school and have never seen lithium metal yourself. Not just it
> reacts violently with water, it FLOATS in ANY liquid, water included. You
> can't FLOOD it with water for an obvious reason -- it is impossible.

How many times have you see burning *lithium*? Not the organic solvents 
in lithium batteries, but lithium metal itself?

> The standard procedure with lithium fires is to somehow isolate it (protect
> as much surrounding objects as possible, maybe push the burning mass to an
> open space if possible) and let it burn until nothing left.
> 
> Just a month or so ago we had a truck loaded with lithium batteries
> overturned and caught fire on a freeway. It took a whole day or two (don't
> remember exactly) for our firefighters to push that burning wreck off the
> freeway into the desert with a bulldozer. Then it took it almost a week to
> burn out.

If they had bulldozers why didn't they just push sand over it? That 
would have extinguished the flames. I guess they might have been worried 
about the organic solvents leaking out and spreading the flames; perhaps 
just leaving it to burn out was the easiest and safest thing to do as it 
was in the desert.

> Pollution is not all that much a problem and pretty harmless. There is white
> lithium grease everywhere and nobody died from that :)

? What white lithium "grease"? If you're talking about the fire in the 
desert it was probably a mess of plastic, nonflammable solvents, and sand.

-- 
Jeff