3 ms·
People with ebikes generally charge a .5kwh-1kwh battery indoors every day. Any spare batteries after the initial bike purchase come from Amazon. At that energy
by khafra 2y ago
People with ebikes generally charge a .5kwh-1kwh battery indoors every day. Any spare batteries after the initial bike purchase come from Amazon. At that energy density, is there any point to trying to contain a potential fire by, say, setting the battery inside a dutch oven? Or on a stack of sheet rock? Or would it burn well-past hot enough to ignite things outside it?
(edit: Dutch Oven has some thermal mass, but too much heat conductivity. Luckily, there is an actual product for this: UL-rated battery storage/charging boxes)
- Filligree 2y agoBattery fires produce highly toxic gases. If you’re doing anything to a combusting battery other than running away, then your priorities are wrong.
- khafra 2y agoRight; a battery box isn't for throwing a battery in after it starts combusting; it's for putting it in every time when you charge it, so you don't burn down the entire apartment building while running away.
- mschuster91 2y agoIf you want to contain it a bit and you don't have a metal-fire extinguisher, dump a bucket of sand or fine salt over it. Commercial metal-fire extinguishers are nothing more than a dozen kilograms of dry, fine salt and a special low-pressure nozzle that allows depositing a "layer" of salt on the burning metal fire that melts and thus contains the fire. However it's hard to keep dry enough that it doesn't aggregate over time, reducing the effectiveness. Personally, I recommend anyone charging serious amounts of unprotected or questionably protected lithium cells in a residential structure to, first of all, not charge them while you are asleep, and to keep a 10-20 liter bucket of sand nearby. Throw it on the burning battery if you can (you should be able to hear the battery go off maybe 30 seconds before it does go off), then run for your life.