How to extinguish a Li-ion battery fire

[IDNeon357]

A li-ion battery has a milliamp storage capacity.

4000 milliamps = about 1 calorie.

1 Calorie blowing-up in your face you will be lucky to have your eybrows burned off.

You could put it in your pants, have it explode. And maybe it'll tickle you.

Not to make light of an exploding battery, but come on people. Energy is NOT MAGIC.

Calories = heat energy, heat energy = fire...(plus a few things)...

1 Calorie couldn't catch toilet paper on fire.

 

[IDNeon357]

To people who want to challenge my mathematics on this. Break a battery yourself and see the result. Every video of an exploding phone battery, while an impressive burst of flame (with very little heat energy in it), are all slow motion for a reason. Good luck getting more than a fraction of a second of flame-output from one.

Also, just this last dive trip I shorted my 3 C-batteries, each are 8000 milliamps. That's 24000 milliamps of stored capacity. That's 6 calories, that's 6x as much as in a single phone/flashlight rechargeable and 1 calorie more than 5 calories of safe-to-operate on high voltage switching equipment in case of arc flash.

I didn't burst into flames, my pocket didn't even burst into flames.

It flamed out in the flashlight and ruined it with soot...

Oh well.

 

[BRT]

A li-ion battery has a milliamp storage capacity.

4000 milliamps = about 1 calorie.

1 Calorie blowing-up in your face you will be lucky to have your eybrows burned off.

You could put it in your pants, have it explode. And maybe it'll tickle you.

Not to make light of an exploding battery, but come on people. Energy is NOT MAGIC.

Calories = heat energy, heat energy = fire...(plus a few things)...

1 Calorie couldn't catch toilet paper on fire.

I'm going to challenge your math. 4000 milliamps or 4000 amps does not equal any energy at all. There has to be a voltage involved and a time involved. For instance 4000 milliamp hours at 4.2 volts would be 16.8 watt hours which is convertible to about 14.45 thousand calories.

 

[IDNeon357]

What about our homes? Kind of makes you think. I wonder if there are any stats on home fires caused by these batteries?

There are, and they are virtually negligible.

There are 17,000 dryer fires each year in the US. Chances are that'll cause a fire. (conflicting info on dryer fires but here's a primary source claiming 2900...oh well Clothes dryer fire safety outreach materials)

Also more on incident energy/arc flashes.

7.1 Cal event.


Conditions matter, arc flash has ignitables readily available in these boxes. Batteries almost certainly do not. But I think you can get an impressive look at 7.1 calories or about 28,000 milliamps (odd equivalence but we don't need to get too far into that).

Again, a phone battery is about 4,000 milliamps. Substantially less. And it doesn't have oil and flammable metals readily ignitable. Unless you store it in a tub of aluminum powder I suppose?

 

[IDNeon357]

I'm going to challenge your math. 4000 milliamps or 4000 amps does not equal any energy at all. There has to be a voltage involved and a time involved. For instance 4000 milliamp hours at 4.2 volts would be 16.8 watt hours which is convertible to about 14.45 thousand calories.

You're not getting a discharge of 4.2 volts during any incidence? You're telling me a phone battery is exploding 14.45 thousand calories? I did just provide you an incidence at 7.1 calories.

I'm gonna wrap up work, go on a date night. I might not reply, it's not me running off, I just sadly don't have time to run through this more thoroughly.

I do want to generate discussion! So feel free to discuss.

EDIT

I think you popped from 4000 milliamps to 4000 amps...when that should have been 4 amps.

At which you would come out to 14.45 calories.

However, we can all agree a phone does not explode at the energy nearly that of 7.1 calories (see cited video) so something's off even if you come to 14.45.

I will stick to ~1calorie per phone battery.

1 Calorie still seems high to me, but compared to 7.1 event recorded and analyzed above...I think 1calorie is reasonable.

 

[IDNeon357]

RC car world, drop it in a bucket of water. Battery alone, or the whole car.
Last RC car battery I bought had disposal instructions, drop in salt water. Once battery voltage is zero it can be thrown away with normal trash.
I have popped a battery once. It was a failing pack. So I took a good cell and put a power supply to it and just turned it up until it popped. I've lit piles of black powder (gun powder) that were less energetic.

Lithium battery isn't a block of Lithium metal. As noted above, Lithium salt. Much like Sodium is very reactive in water, but sodium salt (Sodium Chloride) is what makes salt water salty.

There's 718 calories per gram of black powder Blackpowder

Comes down to how much energy is released and how fast.

I really like the calorie comparison because arc flashes are measured in it and it has a lot of comparative research you can examine.

I will leave the board to debate how much calories are released in a Li battery popping. I just don't have the time right now sadly.

I'm going with about 1 calorie estimate.

 

[tursiops]

I'm going to challenge your math. 4000 milliamps or 4000 amps does not equal any energy at all. There has to be a voltage involved and a time involved. For instance 4000 milliamp hours at 4.2 volts would be 16.8 watt hours which is convertible to about 14.45 thousand calories.

Concur.
1 Watt-hour is about 860 calories, both are energy units. A battery does not hold milliamps, it holds milliamp-hours, at some voltage.
My 32650 battery (cell, actually....), for example, is 6000 ma-h at 3.7V; multiply these together to get 22.2 W-h, or energy. This would yield over 19kcal, probably in a very short time interval, if it exploded. This is enough energy to raise 30 liters of room temperature water to the boiling point and convert it all to steam, if everything happened at 100% efficiency.
Punch line: don't mess around with batteries, or underestimate them.

 

[BRT]

You're not getting a discharge of 4.2 volts during any incidence? You're telling me a phone battery is exploding 14.45 thousand calories? I did just provide you an incidence at 7.1 calories.

I'm gonna wrap up work, go on a date night. I might not reply, it's not me running off, I just sadly don't have time to run through this more thoroughly.

I do want to generate discussion! So feel free to discuss.

EDIT

I think you popped from 4000 milliamps to 4000 amps...when that should have been 4 amps.

At which you would come out to 14.45 calories.

However, we can all agree a phone does not explode at the energy nearly that of 7.1 calories (see cited video) so something's off even if you come to 14.45.

I will stick to ~1calorie per phone battery.

1 Calorie still seems high to me, but compared to 7.1 event recorded and analyzed above...I think 1calorie is reasonable.

16.8 watt hours to calories - Google Search

4000 ma is 4 amps. The rating is not 4000 ma because that is meaningless. Without a voltage level there is no power level and without a voltage and a time there is no energy. The rating is actually 4000 mah or 4000 ma for an hour. 4000 mah times zero volts is zero watts. No energy. However 4000 mah times 4.2 volts gives 16.8 watt hours. Now we have energy. About 16.45 kilocalories or 16.45 thousand calories. You are writing about something you know nothing about.

 

[IDNeon357]

Concur.
1 Watt-hour is about 860 calories, both are energy units. A battery does not hold milliamps, it holds milliamp-hours, at some voltage.
My 32650 battery (cell, actually....), for example, is 6000 ma-h at 3.7V; multiply these together to get 22.2 W-h, or energy. This would yield over 19kcal, probably in a very short time interval, if it exploded. This is enough energy to raise 30 liters of room temperature water to the boiling point and convert it all to steam, if everything happened at 100% efficiency.
Punch line: don't mess around with batteries, or underestimate them.

Do you not mean 19kcal/hours? Convert to just 1 second and you get closer to what is observable. About 5 calories...I mean I guess it's futile to consider a direct comparison since (refer back to youtube video) a 7.1 cal event does not denote the time scale and time would naturally be a factor in that consideration.

7.1calories...over what unit of time?

Back to real world examples, there is ONE reported house fire due to a lithium ion battery that I could find, ever reported. I was unable to find verifiable statistics on Li-battery caused house fires.

Something just doesn't add up with the comparison of the 7.1cal incident and the claim that a battery contains 19kcal's....I just don't know what's not adding up

 

[IDNeon357]

I'm suspicious you're forgetting the time unit conversion.

This here suggests to convert it down to a second (which is the time frame we are working in) you're going to get about 4 calories out of 16.8 watt hours. (14,444 cal/hr)

Calories Per Second. Conversion Chart / Units of Power Converter, Common Units