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| Out-of-control EV blaze (thermal runaway) threatens to sink massive RORO ship. |
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| gnuarm:
--- Quote from: Berni on July 28, 2023, 06:24:33 am ---Large lithium battery fires are indeed a real bitch to actually stop. --- End quote --- That's true for every type of fire. Do you have any particular definition of "large"? I think they found it hard to put out the fires of Tokyo and Dresden. --- Quote ---Yes you can stop them with water, but the problem is that the amount of water required is huge. --- End quote --- And yet, they are often put out easily when fire departments are involved. This is a major topic of disinformation. There was a fire in the stavanger norway airport garage in 2020, which destroyed hundreds of cars and shut down the airport for hours. Initial reports was it started with an EV, but turned out to be an Opel diesel which started the fire. Typical EV misinformation. An EV in Texas caught fire in a crash. Initial reports (see a theme here?) said it took "hours" and a large portion of the fire department to extinguish the blaze. The reality is much smaller. It was extinguished in under an hour (I want to say 30 minutes), but they left one fireman with a garden hose to put out the intermittent flareups. --- Quote ---Combined with the fact that these batteries live in a closed off metal box to protect them means that getting enough water to the burning battery is difficult. --- End quote --- I'm thinking you are a news reporter. Rather than report verifiable facts, you extrapolate and draw conclusions on your own. --- Quote ---The whole thing made worse by the individual cells getting pressurized until they pop open one by one, each pop releasing a cloud of flammable high pressure gas that sends flames shooting out of the battery in random directions and at random times. They are also high voltage so water could in theory pose a shock hazard. --- End quote --- Oh, "in theory"? So, now you are completely speculating, without any basis in reality? Why not actually find something verifiable to report? --- Quote ---Even after you do manage to put the fire out the batteries usually continue to sizzle and short out inside, so the fire spontaneously starts again after like 15 minutes. --- End quote --- Yes, that is true. So, you have a continuing need for a garden hose. --- Quote ---Firefighters are terrified of EV fires for these reasons. --- End quote --- Ah, reporting the emotions of others. I'm glad you can see into their hearts and show it to us. --- Quote ---The Germans came up with one solution for it where they take a bin hauler truck with a hydraulic claw (often used for garbage collection of large items like washing machines). So they fill the metal bin in the back with water, then use the claw to grab the burning car and dunk it whole into the water. However obviously you have to first rescue the occupants of the car, so they still have to work with a burning car manually. --- End quote --- At least they aren't dealing with gasoline fires, which require foam to put out and horribly burn many, many people every year. In the US, there are 150,000 car fires every year, according to government numbers. |
| gnuarm:
It would help a lot if you indicated who you were replying to. --- Quote from: Halcyon on July 28, 2023, 07:05:04 am ---In terms of actual fires, yes, you're right, water is the best method of controlling them, but as you said, it sucks! I've actually been a member of the fire brigade for quite some time and this is straight from our standard operating procedures concerning lithium battery fires attached to motor vehicles or PV arrays (edited for brevity): If a BESS is involved in fire, thermal runaway may occur. Thermal runaway is a chemical reaction where a cell fails inside a battery and a short circuit ignites the electrolyte, releasing excessive heat, toxic gases, and flammable vapours. The heat may affect surrounding cells also sending them into thermal runaway. --- End quote --- So thermal runaway is what we otherwise would call, "burning"? Yes, things burn. Ignite one part of it and other parts get hot and burn too. I think this is also true of gas tanks, especially now that many are made of plastic. Gasoline thermal runaway is particularly spectacular. --- Quote ---Cooling with water can potentially prevent thermal runaway. Water is the best extinguishing agent as foam does not assist in cooling and may inhibit use of a thermal imaging camera (TIC) to identify affected areas of the battery. --- End quote --- Yes, foam is for fighting gasoline and other petroleum fires, because simple water is very ineffective, and will spread the blazing gasoline on top of the water. Picture a river of fire. --- Quote ---A large and sustained supply of water may be required (at least 4000 litres). --- End quote --- I'd like to see the source materials for this claim. I believe that's around 1,000 gallons. I don't know if that is considered a lot for an automotive fire. I know some of the car fires reported here, were truly impossible to extinguish, so I guess that would be an infinite amount of fire fighting liquid. I don't know how many fire departments here have foam to fight gas fires. I guess if they don't, they let them burn out. --- Quote ---The battery needs to be cooled for 15 minutes, then checked with a thermal imaging camera. After ambient temperature is reached, the battery needs to be monitored for up to 60 minutes, then checked again. --- End quote --- LOL I like the thermal camera thing. --- Quote ---In the instance of a large scale BESS – for example inside an industrial building or on a large-scale outdoor installation – there may potentially be multiple appliances required to effectively extinguish a fire and cool the BESS. Ensure that rapid scale-up (with appropriate command and control) is considered. Depending on BESS construction and available resources, a defensive strategy may be adopted, protecting exposures as the BESS burns itself out. (BESS = Battery Electrical Storage Systems in Government speak) I'm not suggesting the firies are the experts in electrical components, but I'm sure they would have done plenty of testing and research before they released this advice. --- End quote --- I'd love to see the reports of those tests and research. I'm a scientist myself. I've learned to not believe things posted on the Internet, until I've read the references. I found one reference on Wikipedia, where the wiki article said the exact opposite of what the reference said. OPPOSITE!! |
| gnuarm:
--- Quote from: mendip_discovery on July 28, 2023, 07:31:11 am ---BBC News - Ameland rescue: Crew jump off ship ablaze with cargo of 3,000 cars https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66310280 Yesterday it was reported by the coastguard the fire was believed to have started with an electric car. But reading the article now that has been watered down. So the YT chap was just a bit quick to jump on the EV cars are bad band wagon for some views. --- End quote --- Very common. The huge airport garage fire at Stavanger airport, in Norway was initially reported as starting with an EV. Turns out it was an Opel diesel. But many read the initial reports, but never read the follow ups that reported the true facts. Reports of EV fires remind me of Mark Twain's quote, "The report of my death was greatly exaggerated". |
| John B:
--- Quote from: gnuarm on July 28, 2023, 07:21:49 am --- --- Quote from: John B on July 28, 2023, 02:22:23 am ---He did a video a long time ago responding a comment that diesel engines run lean, and despite his convincing mocking drawl narration of the comment, he then proceeded to give the impression that he doesn't have the slightest clue how AFRs works. --- End quote --- Maybe I don't either. What's an AFR? --- End quote --- Air Fuel Ratio. He was mocking someone who said diesel engines run lean......which they do. He proceeded to make a video then waffling along about tangential facts, some of which were wrong as well. I thought he had some amount of training/education as an engineer so it was pretty disappointing. Especially when the channel is somewhat pretentiously named "auto expert". Expert is basically a meme word these days. |
| Jeroen3:
Most fire-fighting techniques on ships are incompatible with battery fires. Battery fires are difficult and create their own O2 due to lithium cobalt oxide decomposition. Water doesn't work unless you submerge the whole car. (sink the ship, roro ship are particularly vulnerable for this) Foam doesn't work. Gas doesn't work. Mist doesn't work. You can't extinguish the fire , only prevent spreading. And cars are packed tight on these ships. Batteries are really annoying, really efficient, mostly stable, energy carriers. Though, fires appear to have been a more recent development? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_roll-on/roll-off_vessel_accidents |
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