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PRO

Lithium battery

Just a word of caution when using these batteries, I keep ally batteries in a stihl battery carrier. I use a sealey 20v secateur but yesterday a battery I use for it that was in a stihl battery carrier decided to go nuclear while it was in the back of the van. 

The smoke started to come though the vents in the cab so I thought it was an electrical fire in the dash, I ran round and disconnect the battery but the smoke was still billowing out of the vents so I thought I best get my Jerry cans of fuel and my mowers out before it went up. On opening the side door all the back of van was on fire. I called the fire brigade and tackled the fire, i got it under control by the time the fire service arrived but by then it had also set the side of the road on fire right next to a field of very dry corn. I have lost of a lot of gear due to the fire bit this can be replaced.

I also have some very bad burns on my legs from the molten plastic that I dragged  out of the van.

I was advised to keep a bucket of vermiculite in the van while carrying litium batteries in case this happens again.

So be careful and make sure if carrying these batteries you have some ways dealing with them should they decide to nuclear.

 

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  • PRO

    That was a close one Dave , good that you noticed the smoke in time .

    Were you charging the Battery in the van ? 

    Any thoughts on why the battery went nuclear? 

    It is a worry during the warmer weather carrying loose batteries .

    Thanks for the vermiculite tip 

    • PRO

      No not charging just sat in the battery box.

  • PRO

    Sorry to read this Dave. Hope your doing ok.

    May be it's time we all started investing in fire retardant bags for our batteries.

    Very worrying.

  • Nightmare, i've known a few li-ion packs to be dud's in my time but only as in not taking a charge, generally a faulty one seems basically inert, although it may still contain a lot of energy of course. I have a few "knock off" unbranded ones which I don't entirely trust, but are not used in heavy draining equipment. I know that Stihl packs for example have a thin metal strip under a plastic flap inside the pack, which melts if there is a short circuit in the tool, to save a fire. In my haste to crack on and do jobs the footwell and passenger seat of my truck is often filled with li-ion packs of various brands

  • PRO

    Not so long back I felt something very hot on my leg, I literally had a WTF moment and put my hand in my pocket and realised I had put a 9-volt battery in there which was extremely hot.

    The terminals on the 9-volt battery had shorted across a coin that was also in my pocket, the heat that little battery built up in a very little time was surprising to say the least.

    I have bought a decent storage box for my lithium batteries, but it’s not actually fireproof.

  • Public Member

    >> Any thoughts on why the battery went nuclear?

    Lithium Ion battery fires are very hard to extinguish (starve of oxygen / loads of water, for prolonged period of time). My understanding is that they are caused by a short - a fault during manufacture which then develops over time or subsequent damage - although the latter should be mitigated by design to reduce the chance of that ever happening. I suppose only way to know if a brand is good, bad or indifferent is from frequency of actual occurrences, but one would hope that well known brands are over-engineered, incorporate more safeguards and no corner-cutting.

    There have been some brands of electric car that have had significant problems - the Jaguar iPace had a fair few in early days, and the GM Bolt in USA had a recall of (I think?) "all of them" for complete battery replacement - it seems that the battery manufacturer (S.E. Asia) was responsible because of a manufacturing fault (but it could be that the subsequence assembly, GM in this case, could cause a fault by e.g. crushing something during assembly and increasing the risk of a short).

    I don't think it has anything to do with whether the battery is being charged, or not (as in this case). Once the short develops it then "just happens", although GM told owners, initially, to only charge to X% (dunno if that actually reduced subsequent occurrence, until they replaced them under warranty). I agree that fire-prevention is the best approach - I have various battery chargers on a shelf in my utility room. They are on an external timer, so that the power will only be on for a short time during actual charging (I know charger will shut down when charging complete, but even then they don't completely isolate from the mains)... but I don't think that would stop them, subsequently, igniting whilst they just sat there - if they were inclined to. Perhaps battery charging should be "in a bunker at the end of the garden"! ... not sure how I could protect my shelf area, other than a fire detector for early warning :( but putting the "charged ones" in a fire proof bag / box would seem prudent.

  • This seems to be something that is almost impossible to prepare for.

    In my case. I carry the batteries inside to cab of the Hilux. Not within the tub/canopy. I leave them in their all the time during the season, only bringing them inside to charge. In winter they live in the house.

    So given that you have to carry them with you and that they have to be kept out of the extreme cold of winter, what are you supposed to do? They have to be either inside the house [or outbuilding] or kept/carried in a vehicle.

    Are we to purpose build a free standing, dog kennel sized type of insulated mini shed just to store batteries? So if they go up, they only burn the little shed down. But then the storage shed would need to be far enough away from any other structure/hedge/fence/vehicle so as to be sacrificial if it catches fire when you aren’t there, like in the middle of the night.

    Even if you did all of the above to mitigate the problem, they could still burst into flames at the wrong time, such as when you are travelling with them inside the vehicle, which is most of your working day. So it becomes just like playing Russian roulette.

  • high temperatures like we experienced recently may cause li-ion batteries stored in a vehicle to degrade as it can get insanely hot inside. The terrible thermal runaway scenario Dave experienced is rare but there is always a slight threat. And bearing in mind Dave's was quite a small battery pack yet had such bad consequences. Like Vic and many others I take mine out of the truck in cold weather, not that the cold is ever intense enough to harm the packs of course, but so that they are at a suitable temperature to operate. Certain brands are very picky about being too chilled, others less so. Or they will run a tool but refuse to charge at certain temps

    • PRO

      I have dug out some army surplus ammo boxes which are heavy duty and solid metal and should deny oxygen ,They hold around four batteries but unsure with them being metal they might agitate the batteries ? 

      There was a recent report on lithium batteries dumped at council tips catching fire due to impact and generating heat .

      Possibly new batteries purchased on line could be subject to protective packing to prevent damage from impact during transit . 

      It's a bit of a worry to be honest .

  • PRO

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/MoKo-Fireproof-Explosionproof-Charging-Pro...

    Seriously considering getting something similar to these!

     

     

     

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/MoKo-Fireproof-Explosionproof-Charging-Protection/dp/B08HLJWN6H/ref%3Dasc_…
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