Lithium-Ion Battery Fires on Aircraft are Happening 'Much More Frequently' (cbsnews.com) 86
As smoke began filling the cabin, an airplane passenger saw sparks and fire bursting from a bag in the seat directly behind her — which turned out to be a "smoky flashing lithium battery, which had begun smoldering in a carry-on bag," according to CBS News.
The flight crew contained the situation, and "Airport fire trucks met the plane on the runway and everyone evacuated safely." But a CBS News Investigation "has discovered similar incidents have been happening much more frequently in the skies over the United States." The FAA verifies the number of lithium-Ion battery fires jumped more 42% in the last five years. A CBS News analysis of the FAA's data found that since 2021 there's been at least one lithium battery incident on a passenger plane somewhere in the U.S., on average, once every week...
Some airlines are taking action to control the growing number of fires. They are using specialized "thermal containment" bags designed for flight crews to use if a lithium battery starts heating up to the point where it's smoking or burning. Mechanical engineers at the University of Texas at Austin say the bags can effectively contain fire and keep it from spreading, but don't extinguish it.
In a video accompanying the article, an engineering professor at the university's Fire Research Group even showed a lithium-ion battery fire that continued burning undewater. "You can't put it out. It's a fire within the cell. So, you've got fuel, oxygen, heat in the cell, all." (The article also notes a startup called Pure Lithium is working on a new kind of non-flammable battery using lithium metal cells instead of lithium ion).
Guidelines from America's Federal Aviation Administration require spare lithium-ion batteries be kept with passengers (and not checked) — and prohibits passengers from bringing onboard damaged or recalled batteries and battery-powered devices.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader khb for sharing the article.
The flight crew contained the situation, and "Airport fire trucks met the plane on the runway and everyone evacuated safely." But a CBS News Investigation "has discovered similar incidents have been happening much more frequently in the skies over the United States." The FAA verifies the number of lithium-Ion battery fires jumped more 42% in the last five years. A CBS News analysis of the FAA's data found that since 2021 there's been at least one lithium battery incident on a passenger plane somewhere in the U.S., on average, once every week...
Some airlines are taking action to control the growing number of fires. They are using specialized "thermal containment" bags designed for flight crews to use if a lithium battery starts heating up to the point where it's smoking or burning. Mechanical engineers at the University of Texas at Austin say the bags can effectively contain fire and keep it from spreading, but don't extinguish it.
In a video accompanying the article, an engineering professor at the university's Fire Research Group even showed a lithium-ion battery fire that continued burning undewater. "You can't put it out. It's a fire within the cell. So, you've got fuel, oxygen, heat in the cell, all." (The article also notes a startup called Pure Lithium is working on a new kind of non-flammable battery using lithium metal cells instead of lithium ion).
Guidelines from America's Federal Aviation Administration require spare lithium-ion batteries be kept with passengers (and not checked) — and prohibits passengers from bringing onboard damaged or recalled batteries and battery-powered devices.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader khb for sharing the article.
Sounds like a familiar problem (Score:5, Funny)
Now if we could just figure out how to put out flaming aircraft poops
Re: Sounds like a Steven Segal movie on a plane (Score:2)
Before: "He's got a gun!"
After: "He's got a battery!"!!
Re:Sounds like a familiar problem (Score:5, Informative)
Lithium batteries don't need atmosphere to burn. Their oxidizer is in the cell. Reducing the available oxygen will reduce the intensity of the fire, but it'll just re-grow when the atmosphere gets thicker as it falls.
Re:Sounds like a familiar problem (Score:5, Funny)
Not sure that's entirely optimal either. I mean probably better than letting the plane burn down- but that fire isn't going to go out just from throwing it out of the plane. You're dropping a firebomb on whatever you're flying over. Lithium batteries don't need atmosphere to burn. Their oxidizer is in the cell. Reducing the available oxygen will reduce the intensity of the fire, but it'll just re-grow when the atmosphere gets thicker as it falls.
Aww, but solving one problem by creating another more serious problem is a time honored tradition. It’s the circle of strife.
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Great solution for when over large bodies of water... which planes could ever try to get over in the case that they've got such a fire.
I still can't help but wonder if a better solution though, is just some kind of containment box.
Re:Sounds like a familiar problem (Score:5, Informative)
There is already a "containment box" on board. It is the "thermal containment bag" mentioned in the summary.
This has been a known issue in the RC model community for many years. The containment bags isolate the fire for the 60 seconds it takes for the battery to vent and flame. The bags are cheap and easy to store wherever you have batteries you need to contain. https://rcbattery.com/lithium-... [rcbattery.com]
Re:Sounds like a familiar problem (Score:5, Informative)
But upon further googling, the "Thermal containment bag" that the airlines use is much closer to a box, and does in fact keep the smoke in.
So- cool.
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What they should do is have a large filter bag with charcoal that it has to vent through to take out the worst components of the smoke.
Yes, let's put charcoal in a bag with a flaming battery that releases oxygen.
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What they should do is have a large filter bag with charcoal that it has to vent through to take out the worst components of the smoke.
Yes, let's put charcoal in a bag with a flaming battery that releases oxygen.
Leave it to you to think of the dumbest way like mechanical straw man. Since I have to spell it out just a large separate filter bag that is capable of absorbing organic vapor and activated charcoal is commonly used. Seal the box and it will vent under its own pressure, simply have a short section of flame proof conductive material with fins to act as a heat sink against the cabin atmosphere or even put the tube outlet under water and distribute the bubbles then temperature and occasional flaming bits won
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I'm certainly not contesting that pressures increase, but the idea that "Pressure must build until failure point" is.... uhhh, nonsensical. Obviously, you design your vessel to be capable of handling the pressures you anticipate it needing to hold, and obviously it has a safety vent if those are exceeded.
RC bags don't even try- they're just to keep you and your home from catching on fire.
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I'm certainly not contesting that pressures increase, but the idea that "Pressure must build until failure point" is.... uhhh, nonsensical. Obviously, you design your vessel to be capable of handling the pressures you anticipate it needing to hold, and obviously it has a safety vent if those are exceeded.
Because you don’t know the size of the battery or exactly how much gas will be generated it would mean a container with several inches of steel and would rip right through the hull like it was wet tissue if it failed and that’s not something very friendly to an aircraft. Filtering the smoke is a far lighter option that’s likely not much larger. Pressure vessels are notoriously dangerous bombs for a reason. The problem is the vent, you can’t roll down the window and the cabin filt
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Because you don’t know the size of the battery or exactly how much gas will be generated it would mean a container with several inches of steel and would rip right through the hull like it was wet tissue if it failed and that’s not something very friendly to an aircraft. Filtering the smoke is a far lighter option that’s likely not much larger. Pressure vessels are notoriously dangerous bombs for a reason. The problem is the vent, you can’t roll down the window and the cabin filters aren’t enough to handle the smoke which is quite toxic from both the battery, plastic, and burning components.
I'm not sure I fully buy this logic. We can mathematically derive reasonable expected pressures for any battery, with a large tolerance for the random asshole who managed to smuggle his non-plane-legal battery onboard, and they aren't going to require steel pressure vessels, I'm pretty sure.
I'm pretty sure the airline containment boxes I found aren't filtering- they're containing- exhaust gases and all.
It’s because when people start choking from the smoke they can just move away from it. When a lady dropped a massive 6oz perfume bottle she bought in the duty free shop on the international flight I was on it was a goddamn nightmare. I vomited from the smell and was having enough trouble breathing and didn’t feel right for a day or two, an actual fire would be far worse.
For sure. That's why I said above that an RC bag was inadequate.
That was just horrifically uncomfortable
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I'm not sure I fully buy this logic. We can mathematically derive reasonable expected pressures for any battery, with a large tolerance for the random asshole who managed to smuggle his non-plane-legal battery onboard, and they aren't going to require steel pressure vessels, I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure the airline containment boxes I found aren't filtering- they're containing- exhaust gases and all.
yes, the rules are 100watt hours but like you mention it should be maybe capable of 2x that and a safety factor this paper [nature.com]You can see that copious amounts of gas vent. Let’s say a 200watt hour battery has 4 lbs of battery, and 1 lb of it manages to get turned to gas, then your looking at around 400 bars of pressure in that 1 cubic foot bag, and that’s before you pump it full of a fifth kwh of heat or include the safety factor. Oh, don’t forget you need to contain that pressure at extrem
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However, I didn't see anything that jumped out as immediately dangerous as far as total expected pressure values. Some insane pressures in the battery cylinders, but that's to be expected.
I did find this [faa.gov], showing a maximum recorded pressure of ~100psia in a 21.7L sphere, which is quite tiny, and not really that scary of a pressure.
Help me figure out
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Lol you didn’t read it.
Sure did.
The 27l was just a tiny test to carefully analyze byproducts and was ONE SMALLER CELL
Negative. Though they do not specify how many cells they used, they repeatedly mention "groups of cells" in the 21.7L chamber.
They then summarize that a single 18650 produced about 8L of gas at 100% SOC.
A 100Wh laptop battery is going to have 8 of their test cells.
The explosive tests used up to 5KWh of batteries (~50 top-end laptop 100Wh batteries)
Conclusion? It's impossible to get anywhere close to 400bar of pressure in a 1ft^3 container. You literally couldn't fit enough batteries in it to
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Negative. Though they do not specify how many cells they used, they repeatedly mention "groups of cells" in the 21.7L chamber. They then summarize that a single 18650 produced about 8L of gas at 100% SOC. A 100Wh laptop battery is going to have 8 of their test cells.
Refer to page 10, 2.3.1 stating ONE or more cells used. Now refer to figure 8 talking about a CELL. Note a 27l chamber gets to 18psi from a vacuum before they dropped the pressure by cooling and it did not have atmosphere. One cell in a giant trash bag, no volume to full volume almost 2 bars, giant like a hotdog down a hallway. Now realize those airline bags aren’t cargo hold sized, they are closer to 7 liters than 27. But let’s say 10. So that’s 2.7x the pressure plus 50x for far more
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Refer to page 10, 2.3.1 stating ONE or more cells used.
Refer to:
Though they do not specify how many cells they used, they repeatedly mention "groups of cells" in the 21.7L chamber.
Now refer to figure 8 talking about a CELL.
Refer to:
They then summarize that a single 18650 produced about 8L of gas at 100% SOC.
Note a 27l chamber gets to 18psi from a vacuum before they dropped the pressure by cooling and it did not have atmosphere.
21.7. You keep saying 27. It's 21.7.
Just a bit smaller than 1 ft^3.
From that same section, note:
The heater was then activated and remained on
until thermal runaway occurred for all of the cells.
That test was more than 1 cell.
Further, chamber was pressurized to 10psia before thermal runaway (~0.6 bar) - which is around what aircraft cabins are pressurized to at cruise altitude, which is, I suspect, why they chose that value.
That means however many cells they used only increased the pressure in our 1ft^3 test vessel by 8psi.
Real batteries are covered in long gasoline chemical chains with electrolytic caps for seasoning and likely will react because so many cells are burning at the same time it creates very high temperatures and burns things you wouldn’t see in a single bare cell in a spherical vaccuum.
1) conjecture.
2) you keep saying single cell. that is incor
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21.7. You keep saying 27. It's 21.7. Just a bit smaller than 1 ft^3.
Sure, it’s a small difference.
That test was more than 1 cell.
conjecture. The entire paper has incomplete information and does not even list the most important information, if I were grading this it would get an F for not including the most important data.
urther, chamber was pressurized to 10psia
Sure, again it’s not a big difference.
Real batteries are covered in long gasoline chemical chains with electrolytic caps for seasoning and likely will react because so many cells are burning at the same time it creates very high temperatures and burns things you wouldn’t see in a single bare cell in a spherical vaccuum.
1) conjecture.
It’s conjecture that real batteries in products are surrounded by plastic or that smart battery circuits exist in pretty much every commercial product with multiple cells? The only company I could find advertising bags for airp
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301L/cell seems anomalously high, and they agree. Perhaps their batteries exploded, giving them anomalous readings.
Look at it this way-
You can YouTube demonstrations of airtight 100Wh rated fire containment bags that are sold to airlines right now. Lined with kevlar- they can even handle if the 100Wh battery fucking explodes.
I did when this whole conversation started. It's quite cool. There are some that let smo
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Less probable that it lands on stuff, but there are large vessels on the ocean too.
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>Well it's okay for international flights that are flying over the ocean.
and thus it came about that the entire surface of the planet was destroyed, as the flying machines of man began their bombardment of Atlantis, angering Triton and the merfolk, triggering the Final War.
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Re:Sounds like a familiar problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Lithium batteries don't need atmosphere to burn. Their oxidizer is in the cell.
That's true of NMC, but not LFP. The problem is that we're using the shittiest chemistry because it produces the most profit (and it has the most power density so devices can be 0.2mm thinner!) LFP also has no cobalt, and takes less energy to make overall. We should really be banning batteries which contain their own oxidizer at least for anything other than stationary applications. Given the toxicity of such a fire, though, I think we should ban them completely.
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Dropping it out of the aircraft wouldn't be optimal, but a fire-resistant metal box to contain the heat and flames isn't a terrible idea. The ventilation system of the plane can manage the smoke if you can keep it from catching anything else on fire. It also makes sense to add in heat protective mitts to transport the malfunctioning device too.
Li-Po fires are no joke. "Kinetic neutralization" (cutting in half with a spade) a damaged 3s LiPo on my driveway threw sparks, flame, and enough heat to make us b
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Just put the bag in a fire proof box and let it burn itself out.
Re:Sounds like a familiar problem (Score:5, Informative)
This is actually something which already exists and is FAA certified - its what Boeing had to put in place after the early 787 “ships battery” fires. The ships battery (the thing which provides all power when the aircraft has its engines and APU turned off and is off ground power) is sealed in a fire proof box which is vented to the outside.
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Just have an emergency poop chute air lock. Something carry on sized on fire? Simply pop it in the chute and space it out the airlock err vent it to low atmosphere. Problem solved.
I hope it lands on your house.
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It would have to be large enough to shove the largest cabin bag in there. Lithium batteries are difficult to handle when on fire, so you'd have to chuck the whole bag out.
I've always wondered (Score:3)
How come airplanes don't have some sort of mini-airlock to chuck stuff overboard?
Not just for lithium ion batteries: back when smoking onboard was still a thing (remember that?), sometimes stuff would catch on fire - as it regularly happens to smokers who fall asleep or fail to put out their cigarette. It would be nice to get rid of stuff on fire altogether, especially with lithium ion battery fires that can't be extinguished.
Re:I've always wondered (Score:5, Funny)
Because in an era where forests are dry and fires are common, it's a great idea for planes to solve their problems by bombing random terrain with small high-intensity ignition sources that don't go out.
Re: I've always wondered (Score:3)
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Re: I've always wondered (Score:2)
Basically the bags they have do that
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A better idea would be phones with removable batteries and to be capable of running purely off a USB cable for power.
That's not possible. On average, a cellphone is capable of running off USB power, it pulls instantaneous spikes of current that can shoot up to 10A.
I know that because I have an old Planet Computer Gemini [wikipedia.org] whose battery started to swell, but I didn't wan't to replace it because that cellphone is actually quite shit: I've been using it only as a bedside video player for the past few years - the only thing it's any good at really - and getting the battery changed was going to be throwing away good money after
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A better idea would be phones with removable batteries and to be capable of running purely off a USB cable for power.
That's not possible. On average, a cellphone is capable of running off USB power, it pulls instantaneous spikes of current that can shoot up to 10A.
No, it is absolutely possible. The maximum current draw of a device is entirely controllable by the operating system by limiting the use of higher power states. Nothing physically prevents a device from limiting its current draw to what is available from the DC input. That's how the iPhone tries to reduce the risk of sudden shutdowns when the battery is starting to fail.
In fact, I would argue that at least for devices powered by USB-C PD (where the upstream power available is known), if an operating syst
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That's how the iPhone tries to reduce the risk of sudden shutdowns when the battery is starting to fail.
My cheap-as-chips Xioamis have been doing that for as long as I can remember, too.
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Yeah, but nobody knows that because they didn't get sued for "slowing down muh phone."
maybe a better idea (Score:2)
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How come airplanes don't have some sort of mini-airlock to chuck stuff overboard?
Because people take a dim view of being bombed by a consumer aircraft.
I have a better question for you. Why do you think we need this? TFS describes an existing solution that is working perfectly fine. We don't have aircrafts falling out of the sky from lithium batteries, there's no recorded incidents of deaths as a result of fire on a plane caused by lithium batteries.
What problem do you think you are solving?
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Alternative Question (Score:2)
Re:Alternative Question (Score:5, Informative)
Why do lithium batteries keep catching fire? Seems like a design or construction flaw to me. I guess in an effort to keep them small and light, the designers have eliminated any safety factors like protection from physical damage.
It's a combination of a lot of factors.
A lot of people are now vaping instead of smoking cigarettes, which significantly increases the number of lithium ion batteries on board the average aircraft. Worse, these devices are likely built on the cheap side compared with a multi-hundred-dollar phone, so there's a good chance that corners are being cut on the quality side.
We also have a lot more cell phones in the air than we did two decades ago, and they're more likely to be actively used while on the plane thanks to the airlines removing the in-seat entertainment system in lieu of everyone using their phones, laptops, and tablets.
That said, blaming cell phones in general is somewhat disingenuous. Since 2016, the number of cell phone sales by year has been pretty constant, and presumably most of those are replacing existing devices. During that period, the number of mobile subscribers in total changed from only about 7.4 billion to about 8.3 billion, which is not a very big increase. But the number of battery fires has gone way up.
What hasn't remained constant is the number of smartphones in use. In 2016, there were 32 incidents with 3.668 billion smartphone users. In 2022, there were 72 incidents with about 6.6 billion smartphone users. So the risk ends up being almost linear in the percentage of smartphones compared with feature phones. I suspect that these fragile, power-hungry devices lack adequate ability to cool themselves, and are not aggressive enough about thermal throttling to protect the battery from damage, resulting in a greater fire risk than older devices that didn't have high-temperature CPUs and GPUs sealed inside the same enclosure as the battery.
Compounding this problem is the fact that because people are flying for hours at a time, a large percentage of those people will have to charge those devices while in the air if they want to have working phones at their final destinations. Batteries are most likely to fail catastrophically when they are charging, and the lack of in-flight entertainment screens mean a lot more people are using their phones while they are plugged in. This is the worst-case scenario as far as thermal runaway goes, because the device is getting hot from being used heavily *and* from charging, all at the same time, and all while probably inside a protective case. That's the trifecta.
Instead of using round cells, everything uses pouch cells now, which gives you more density, but more room for hydrogen gas to form inside the cell before it vents, which I'm pretty sure greatly increases the fire risk when it finally does (because the pouch expands to the breaking point and/or gets punctured by the interior of the device).
Devices are getting smaller, which limits the expansion room before a pouch cell starts putting pressure on the enclosure.
As devices have gotten smaller and more fragile, I suspect that more users are putting cases around their devices. Cases trap heat inside the devices, which reduces the lifespan of lithium pouch batteries considerably, and makes them more prone to swelling.
As devices have gotten more capable, the need for upgrading devices every year or two has diminished greatly, so devices are, on average, considerably older than they were five years ago. And because these batteries are hard to change (glued in), that means the batteries are also considerably older than they would be if people replaced them at the first sign of reduced capacity, and thus they are considerably more likely to be in a compromised condition.
It is entirely possible that cost cutting and space saving has reduced the use of thermal and/or pressure sensors in and around the battery.
It is entirely possible that battery quality has
Re:Alternative Question (Score:5, Interesting)
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A lot of people are now vaping instead of smoking cigarettes, which significantly increases the number of lithium ion batteries on board the average aircraft. Worse, these devices are likely built on the cheap side compared with a multi-hundred-dollar phone, so there's a good chance that corners are being cut on the quality side.
People are even building their own [yahoo.com] vape cartridges, with expected results.
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>People are even building their own [yahoo.com] vape cartridges, with expected results.
So-called modding has long been a thing for some vapers. Mechanical mods are essentially home-made kits that can be incredibly dangerous in the hands of people who don't understand circuitry (if there is much of any in the mod) and lithium batteries. Some of these things are essentially lithium cells wired directly to the coil with nothing in there to manage overheating or shorts. While even regulated vapes carry risk,
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It's a combination of that and using older cheaper battery formulations. It's hard to set an IMR cell on fire, for example.
Many smartphones also use slightly cheaper old formulations and then they squeeze the soft pack a bit too much to get that last 0.1mm thinner.
Re: Alternative Question (Score:1)
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Thereâ(TM)s nothing preventing manufacturers to switch to LiFePO4 cells that donâ(TM)t have this flammability issue. People keep approaching this as if battery cell chemistry is a monolithic concept without any options to affect their problems.
LiFePO4 is not a panacea, though. Although they have a lower fire risk, and although thermal runaway starts at a higher temperature and produces a smaller temperature increase [faa.gov], they can still catch fire when overheated. And they aren't immune to dendrite formation, which can cause internal shorts that could cause a thermal runaway event and start a fire. And in exchange for that extra safety, you have a lower energy density, AFAIK, which isn't always easy to accommodate.
Newer battery chemistries that try
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In a nutshell, if you run sufficient trials on a low probability event, the cumulative probability of that event happening rises.
But I suspect there may also be issues with counterfeit or off-brand batteries. Lithium ion is a dangerous battery chemistry made safe by multiple belt-and-suspenders safety feaures, and those features are made somewhat affordable by enormous production volumes. But you can still make a killing by making substandard cells.
I think this is what's going on with e-bike battery fire
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I think phones are not likely to be the problem even though exposure levels are high because literally every passenger is going to have one; phones these days don't have replaceable batteries. But there are still laptops and other that have replaceable batteries, either quick-swappable or easily replaceable with a screwdriver set.
I think you overestimate the quality of factory batteries, and underestimate the quality of the third-party batteries. A lot of those cheap replacement parts are made by the same factories that make batteries for a wide range of other consumer electronics.
In the last decade or so, I've replaced four factory Apple batteries because of capacity problems, and IIRC three of them were significantly swollen. Only the laptop battery wasn't.
Heat is the main enemy of lithium ion/polymer batteries, and unlike lapto
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Perspective (Score:2)
"Once a week" is about 1 in 40,000 (based on 5670 domestic flights per day)
Even right in the article, I was kinda expecting that number to be higher.
Hazmat Incidents that happened on planes from 2013-2022; 9,135.
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The ship's head.
How often is this happening elsewhere? (Score:2)
I generally don't see or hear about people's lithium ion battery-powered devices catching on fire except on airplanes where such fires are especially problematic.
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I generally don't see or hear about people's lithium ion battery-powered devices catching on fire except on airplanes where such fires are especially problematic.
Then you're not paying attention. Because more items, including scooters and toys, use lithium-ion batteries, fires are becoming more frequent [ny1.com].
From 2019 to 2022, there’s been a more than 1,000% increase in injuries from fires that started with an e-bike or e-scooter, and there’s been a more than 600% increase in the fires themselves.
Hoverboards are also an issue [cbsnews.com].
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Are we talking about the same class of battery-powered devices? How many scooters and toys are catching on fire on planes? I was under the impression we're mostly discussing phones since those are the most common lithium ion battery-powered devices on commercial airliners.
Yeah I've heard about scooters and ebikes catching on fire. And there was a ton of coverage of Samsung s7 devices burning up (on planes, no less).
fire demon in your carry-on (Score:3, Interesting)
Li-ion batteries are much like thermite charges. In our area, last week a badly charged (Chinese-made) electric scooter burned down much of an apartment building. Firemen could not put it out and it spread.
Why yes, I want to park a car having 1000 of these in it in my garage. In regions that had floods this year, electric vehicles are ticking time bombs as they corrode.
The technology is pretty risky.
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Funny.
Hurricane Sandy and the Port of New Jersey would like to disagree. Sure, a bunch of Fisker Karma cars burned up in the lot, but that was traced to failure in the 12V system, not the high-voltage system.
EVs are well protected from floods, because every idiot knows electricity and water don't mix. And cars get wet all the time, including getting wet in the oddest of places (and that includes inside the cabin -
Built-in batteries are magically safe? (Score:2)
It would also be interesting to know how many of the reported fires are a direct consequence of mechanical mistreatment, and how many are spontaneous failures happening without any stress to the battery.
Re: Built-in batteries are magically safe? (Score:2)
"Guidelines from America's Federal Aviation Admini (Score:2)
So.. much more frequently... (Score:3, Interesting)
"Apr 10, 2023
Air Traffic By The Numbers Every day, FAA 's Air Traffic Organization ( ATO) provides service to more than 45,000 flights and 2.9 million airline passengers" (FAA)
"In 2022, the Federal Aviation Administration reported at least 62 incidents involving lithium-ion batteries on airplanes and in airports, compared to 54 incidents the previous year." (Forbes)
Do we need to take reasonable precautions? Sure.
But it is 62 incidents per *year*
Out of 45,000 flights per *day*
"A Now News analysis of the FAA's data found that since 2021 there's been at least one lithium battery incident on a passenger plane somewhere in the US, on average, once every week. " So 1 battery fire per 305,000 flights.
And I can't find any fatalities associated with the fires over the prior or several prior years yet.
Corrections welcome if you can find some.
bad battery when traveling? (Score:2)
I had 2 camera batteries go bad on a trip to Amsterdam. Fortunately, Netherlands makes it easy to get rid of this kind of toxic waste, I was able to dispose of them in the battery bin at the local grocery store. I did NOT want to bring those on the airplane home with me.
But that's a larger problem: If you're traveling (and most people on airplanes are :-) ) and you have a battery that starts to go bad, how do you get rid of it without introducing toxic waste into the hotel garbage can?
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how do you get rid of it without introducing toxic waste into the hotel garbage can?
I would suppose that larger hotels manipulate many batteries (smoke detectors, emergency lights, wireless mice) and probably have a bin for their own use behind the counter. Otherwise, if you travel EU, every shop is obliged to accept waste similar to the items they sell. If the hotel souvenir shop sells batteries or battery-powered toys, they have to take battery waste (in principle, only if you make a purchase with them; but you are a customer of the hotel already).
This will be solved after a huge accident (Score:2)
This is actually the thing I worry most about when flying nowadays: Someone putting a battery into their luggage and that catching fire.
Because you can forbid it but if people "forget" and can leave guns in their luggage, they'll do the same with devices.
The only re-assuring thing is that once this ends in badly a couple of times, the airlines will have to react.
An batteries, even those with pillows, don't always end in fire. But you can count on the fact that passengers
will not give up their iphone with a