Title kinda says it all. I have heard Li-ion battery fires are near impossible to extinguish. They have all they need to burn on their own.
Like most people these days I live with these batteries (including one fairly large one). I have an ABC fire extinguisher but not sure that is useful.
I have Googled this and I have seen everything from it can’t be put out to just use any fire extinguisher (ABC) and you’ll be fine. I have seen some extinguishers that claim they are made to put out that kind of fire but can they (and can they put out other fires so I can just have that one?)
So much confusion (for me). I’d like to be safe but not sure what will work here.
I can’t find a link now, but recently, when an e-bike caught fire, Fire & Rescue used a “new” system of inserting a mist of water into the heart of the fire.
I think, from what I’ve seen, the most common way for dealing with a Lithium Ion battery fire is to contain it until it burns itself out. Airplanes have fireproof bags that they can use in an attempt to contain a battery fire (which I think they then put the whole thing into one of the galley appliances (microwave?)). Fire Departments have blankets they can use to put over cars to try and keep the fire contained.
In my state, and others I assume, EV and Hybrid cars now have an EV sticker on their license plates so FFs know what they’re dealing with.
If the battery box is intact and there are no exposures, the best solution is to simply wait for the battery to burn itself out, then extinguish the remaining class A fire
I found an abstract relating to extinguishing battery fires in submarines, where total immersion is not practicable: I hope this is not to large an extract.
Extinguishing Mechanisms
There are three mechanisms associated with the extinguishment of fires by water mist:
• Cooling
The cooling mechanisms provided by water mist for fire suppression comprise cooling the flame and cooling the fuel surface. Water droplets can penetrate the flame, reducing the flame temperature below adiabatic as well as reducing the temperature of the fuel below its flash point. Each of these mechanisms is capable of halting combustion [24].
• Oxygen depletion
During a fire, water droplets are converted to vapour and the total volume occupied by the droplets increases by over three orders of magnitude. The water volume expansion results in the disruption in the entrainment of air into the flame as well as the dilution of the oxygen to below the limiting oxygen concentration, halting combustion.
• Radiation attenuation
The presence of water mist significantly decreases the radiant heat flux to materials in the proximity of the fire, through heat absorption, which will limit the spread of fire. Water mist will also reduce the radiation feedback to the fuel surface, reducing the pyrolysis rate of the fuel.
You want to distinguish a bit between a lithium fire, and a lithium ion battery fire.
The problem with the battery fire is that as the battery is progressively destroyed, more and more of the stored electro-chemical energy comes out very rapidly as heat. Plus oxygen. Which keeps the fire going and does more destruction in a chain reaction.
IMO / IME there is no “putting out” a Li ion battery fire. You just try to prevent it from setting its surroundings on fire, or quickly move it to someplace you don’t mind getting burned up.
Yep.
Bag plus long-sleeved oven mitts. Drop the whole device, from vape pen to laptop into the fireproof bag. Return it to galley, dump in some water or soda or whatever is handy if time & fumes permit, close up the bag and put into a regular (not microwave) oven. You know, a big metal box that’s designed to get very hot inside without harming anything outside. Then just wait until the fire subsides however many hours later that is.
That’s what I thought I heard, but I didn’t know if regular passenger jets had regular ovens.
Back in college a friend of mine fell asleep (for the night) with a pizza in the oven. The next morning she had a complete meltdown as she came to the realization that she could’ve set the dorms on fire. Eventually I got her to understand that, of all the places in an old dorm to have a fire, inside the oven is probably about the safest place for that to happen.
Thinking back about that incident, I’m surprised none of the other 6 roommates noticed and no smoke detectors went off. But I guess that goes to show the oven must’ve done a good job keeping it contained.
I saw some video that included professionals dealing with lithium-ion battery fires in some actuarial continuing ed webinar recently. They used water. And i think the point wasn’t to “put out” the battery, but to prevent it from catching other things on fire. Like, when a car starts burning in a garage, you don’t “put the car in an oven”, but you can douse the garage in water to protect the rest of the house. Similarly, when a laptop has already burst into flames on a wooden floor, you can try to prevent the floor from catching on fire.
During a recent training I was shown a video of a containment system which consisted of a box you seal the overheating device in. Then you add water, and the idea is to completely immerse it. It’s intended for aircraft use, though the planes I’ve flown have always had the bag kit. I’ll try to find a link.
As above. The problem is getting the heat out. Cool it down enough and it will go out. For different expectations of “out”. Leave enough hot material in the battery and it will reignite. Damaged cells may reignite no matter what.
I have seen a method using what is essentially a water jet cutter to breech a vehicle battery and isolate the runaway cells. Not much use if your entire vehicle is already properly alight. But if a vehicle is got to early enough it may avoid a long and messy process.
The alternative tactic is to just safely isolate the vehicle in some manner and let it burn out. Blankets or a shipping container fitted to resemble a large oven.
The problem with just trying to cool a battery by pouring water on it is that that is only cooling the battery casing. There isn’t the surface area to get enough heat out. So breaching the casing and getting water to where it can actually cool the core problem is a win. But not trivial when the whole thing is a toxic flaming disaster.
You don’t need to prevent the battery from burning up. It’s not as if you will ever use it again. I think preventing it from igniting other stuff is good enough, and water is cheap, plentiful, and has a high specific heat, so it works reasonably well in many circumstances. You just need to keep adding more room-temp water until it stops generating more heat.
The problem with a battery vehicle fire is that letting the battery burn out takes many hours, wrecks the road surface, and ties up significant fire fighting resources for those many hours. Moreover it is a hazardous mess for the entire time. So the idea is to cut the process short. There is not a chance the vehicle is salvageable no matter what. (Well the owner might get the chance to salvage personal effects, and a wrecker might find some value in some unscathed parts. So maybe a tiny upside versus total burn out.)
The water jet cutter doesn’t pussy about, it just slices into the car wherever it needs to to get to the root. Being able to tilt the car helps get underneath access. They don’t mess about avoiding damage to the car doing that either. It ain’t ever going home.
They do, and I don’t believe airplane galleys normally have microwaves at all. The reason they use regular ovens is just because they have to heat up a large number of passenger meals at once, and a microwave is pretty useless for very large volumes.
Not on international flights. The logistics of meals on one of those is remarkable. Hundreds of hot meals emerging from a couple of tiny galleys after a brain numbing journey half way across the planet.
Of course if you are at the front end of the bus meals can be a big production.
According to this, the usual process is that airline meals are quick-chilled and kept that way until serving time, then reheated in convection ovens. Keeping food hot for a long time would impair the quality of most foods.
Paging @KCB615 and @Spiderman. They’re both in the fire / rescue biz and can probably explain current best practices for Li-ion cars and household gizmos.
AIUI the household gizmos was really the OP’s focus. No civilian is going to put out a burning car; all we need to know is “Escape it and get and stay upwind.”
But each of us sitting here at home or wherever is surrounded by Li ion batteries big enough to wreck our morning. What to do when one starts sputtering, swelling, smoking, etc.?? Better have a plan because the situation will almost certainly get much worse before it gets any better.
If you have long tongs, i bet dumping the burning phone into a large pot of water would work. Not to put it out, but to safely contain it. Running away and calling 911 to report a fire may often be the best bet, though.
The key thing to know is that if it starts to smoke, you don’t want to pick it up with your hands.
From the kitchen: long tongs, oven mitts, a spatula, a dry dishtowel? From the toolbox: a pair of pliers or vice grips or similar. From the shed: a shovel or pitch-fork like thing.
The hard part as I was running around in my head imagining desperately searching for an appropriate tool or container while my phone is trying to set my chair on fire is just how much of the stuff I (and I assume we all) own is now plastic. Which is not a good material for grabbing a hot item or carrying a hot item.
Your kitchen is probably the place with most of your tools and containers that can withstand high temps long enough to get the problem submerged in a water bath.