Another Tesla Fire
- Thread starter Trav
- Start date
It was. As shown by the 2009 fireengineering article I posted a link to above, Teslas are hardly the only thing that produces hydrogen cyanide gas when it burns....
And what synthetic product that is not designed to be burned, doesn't emit noxious / hazardous fumes? I wonder if OP has ever been to a house fire. Or a ICE vehicle fire? Would he be comfortable standing up close and personal breathing in the fumes?
There are people out there who think that plenum cable (which is the type of cable that must be used when installed in air-handling spaces, like drop ceilings) doesn't produce hazardous fumes when it burns. That is the level of confusion that exists about fire safety.
As you probably know, the reason for using plenum cable is that the fumes it produces aren't thick, dark fumes that will prevent you from finding the fire exit. They certainly aren't non-toxic.
JHZR2
Staff member
Not really at all.
All the plastic parts breaking, suspension work, tires, HVAC, infotainment, etc. all still needs to be done. Engine work is pretty darn rare at this point, its primarily the balance of plant... and guess what.... batteries have sensors, controls, controllers, wiring, networks, cooling systems, etc.
Thats a good point. The nastiness of regular cars is still there in EVs. Just with a much harder to fight fire, and a much more guaranteed chance of a real safety event as time progresses.
This is pretty common. Latent defects and damage exist even in good cells, let alone ones that have been abused. In doing battery safety testing, its not uncommon at all to see a secondary and ternary safety event days after the battery was assumed safe.
There is no intrinsically safe for batteries, and deluge type firefighting is the best practice. But tightly packed battery packs, necesary for density, result in designs that cant get the agent into, and cant get the latent heat out...
JHZR2
Staff member
Making hydrogen does. Hydrocarbon - reforming - water-gas shift more or less always leaves remnant CO, and plenty of CO2.Burning hydrogen doesn't
Electrolysis is cleaner but obviously needs a lot of electric power, and trace that...
When I was a kid I used to do the electrolysis experiment with salt water and copper wire for the electrodes. The science books always said to use carbon rods for the electrodes, and washing soda, not salt. But neither are very common.
I'm sure that was a nice chlorine gas generator.
Much of that seems to be due to the energy stored in the batteries.
Dead lithium-ion batteries are quite boring. They don't burst into flames when physically abused.
JHZR2
Staff member
You would be surprised. The electrolyte is highly flammable and the fuel air fires are still nasty.
Its hard to get a truly dead Li-ion battery. Taking them to 0V is the only way, and then it is permanently damaged (the Cu current collector starts to dissolve around 2V).
I took some old li-ion cellphone batteries that had been sitting around for a year or more and did the following:
1)Applied 120V AC to the terminals (this after removing the BMS circuit and any other protection the battery had)
2)Hit them with a hammer
3)Drove a nail through them with that hammer
About all that happened is they gave off an odor. Hard to describe it, kind of a sweet smell.
But no smoke, no flames. I didn't try to light them on fire with an external source of flame.
Then later on I took a li-ion battery from an iphone, this battery had been replaced because it had lost capacity. It still had a charge on it.
Punctured it with a knife and it burst into flames that were at least a foot high.
I did not know that. I ran speaker wire between walls and "it" said to use plenum cable. Figured it was something to do with fire.
I've seen those videos online. Pretty wild reaction.
Plenum cable isn't required anywhere in a residential dwelling, as far as I know. Even if it were, it would only be in air return or supply chases/vents.
I was making it safe for disposal. Had that battery gone in the trash, there probably would have been a garbage truck fire.
Sure, I understand that I have seen a few cars burn in my time but I think the point is the cars burning for no reason (obviously there is something wrong) days later just sitting there and the difficulty extinguishing the fire. I have idea how much toxic gas is released burning seat cusions and other things create vs a huge bank of lithium batteries but just looking at the magnitude of the fires I would venture a guess that it is no where near.
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It was in a wrecking yard. It had been involved in a crash.
I knew someone who had a towing company and he would routinely store vehicles that had been in a crash in his building, with the 12V battery still connected.
He never had a fire from doing that but the possibility was always there, as a 12V battery connected to an electrical system which could have been damaged in a crash IS a potential fire hazard.
As is a 360V lithium-ion battery connected to an electrical system which could have been damaged in a crash.
Owen Lucas
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Wrecking yards are an environmental disasters to begin with. Ground that has decades of oil, coolant, fuel, battery acid, and various other lubes soak into the soil. Does it make it into the ground water eventually poisoning wells? Who knows.
The recycling industry will have to come up with solutions to storing electric vehicles. Maybe a designated area of the yard, paved with sprinklers or dedicated hydrant access?
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EV repair/maintenance might be less often, but can YOU do it at home yourself instead of having to rely on shop for the majority of things it will need? Same sort of thing applies to phones these days as in the past I've replaced battery packs, charge ports, a screen, etc. Now phones are purposely designed to pretty much force DIY out of the equation and has to be done in shop.