Let’s Speak About Lithium-Ion Cell Transportation

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For those who’ve tried to drive between the LA metro space and Las Vegas within the final couple of days, you most likely didn’t have an excellent time. A truck carrying a 75,000 lb container with lithium-ion battery cells inside acquired into an accident and the cells went into thermal runaway. The ensuing fireplace wasn’t simply extinguished, and makes an attempt to tug it away from the roadway have been unsuccessful. This left drivers caught on Interstate 15 close to Baker, California, for hours.

#Baker #California I-15 closed close to #Baker after a semi-truck carrying lithium batteries caught fireplace Friday morning. The hearth was reported at approx 6:30am. I-15 was closed in each instructions by 8:30am.#CaliforniaHighwayPatrol and the #SanBernadinoFireDept suggested the… pic.twitter.com/ea0ec6iHRz

— SLCScanner (@SLCScanner) July 27, 2024

The standard disinformation concerning the hazard of lithium-ion batteries is already pouring out on social media. They’re supposedly little bombs or fireplace makers sitting there in your automobile, and also you by no means know after they would possibly go off. So, we must always all return to burning fossil fuels for every thing, and possibly even connect little gasoline engines to every thing like within the previous Nissan LEAF business, proper?

However, the fact is that fires of this kind in electrical vehicles, telephones, and laptops are very uncommon. Often, a poorly designed gadget/car or faulty batch of cells will go up and trigger a streak of fires earlier than a recall cures them, however aside from that, battery cells have confirmed to be very secure — safer than gasoline tanks in vehicles.

This security is not any accident. The battery cells themselves are speculated to be constructed with a sure tolerance for harm earlier than they’d go into thermal overload. The units themselves have automated battery administration techniques that forestall an excessive amount of energy from being pulled or an excessive amount of warmth from increase. Then, electrical automobiles have strong containers round them designed to resist a really severe accident with out exposing the cells to break.

These techniques can fail beneath excessive circumstances, although. For instance, some badly sealed electrical automobiles in Florida acquired flooded after a hurricane, leading to a number of fires when saltwater intruded and shorted the cells out. Often, an excessive accident or one thing uncommon like an fool negligently firing a pistol into the battery pack could cause a hearth. However, general, units and automobiles utilizing lithium batteries are nonetheless safer than the alternate options.

However what about cells that aren’t but connected to a battery administration system and aren’t packaged in a protecting shell to maintain water and mechanical harm away? That’s a query this accident goes to power us to consider.

Protected Storage & Carry Of Unfastened Cells

Earlier than I get into this, I need to make it clear that I don’t know how this container of battery cells was packed. For all I do know, precautions in opposition to fireplace have been taken at each step and one thing extremely uncommon occurred throughout this crash to trigger them to go up in flames. That data goes to have to come back out because the investigation continues.

That having been mentioned, there are some fairly severe issues of safety within the trucking trade proper now. There are just too many trucking corporations participating in poor driver hiring and coaching, unhealthy loading and securing of hundreds, uncared for car upkeep, and different issues that we anticipate skilled haulers to do higher at. There are laws for all of this, in fact, however the sheer quantity of cargo that must be hauled round the US each day implies that it could be value prohibitive to verify on everyone and ensure they’re all doing the precise factor.

Whereas practically all trucking corporations, drivers, and folks loading trailers are good folks doing their finest, there’s a small minority of corporations who lower corners, rent drivers with suspended CDLs, use unlawful medicine, and many others. Many corporations which can be thought of secure push drivers to do dumb issues like drive drained, too.

Along with regular truck and cargo security, there are particular guidelines and pointers for the secure transport of lithium-ion batteries. They’re thought of hazardous supplies (hazmat), and are topic to all of these guidelines. Guidelines differ for unfastened cells vs full batteries and units which have security techniques working. Earlier than being shipped, the cells themselves have to fulfill relevant security requirements for issues like influence, brief circuit resistance, overcharge, and vibration. Smaller battery cells and packs are topic to totally different hazmat guidelines than bigger ones, as bigger ones are probably extra harmful.

These security requirements are far too advanced to totally tackle right here (however you’ll be able to learn all about them right here), however in brief, cells and batteries should be cared for at each stage. The cells themselves, the packaging they’re in, the temperatures, and the general load of batteries are all regulated. On prime of that, there are particular guidelines for any cells which can be used, broken, or topic to recollects to make these hundreds even safer.

A Lot Of Failure Factors

Once you stack all of those laws, there’s plenty of issues that may go incorrect. Staple items, like a drugged out or unhealthy driver, or an unsecured load can go incorrect. Extra advanced errors, like faulty battery cells, badly packed hundreds, and such might all be in charge for the hearth. Absent some actual take care of ensuring everybody does it proper, these accidents might change into extra frequent as increasingly more batteries go into commerce.

The laws appear to be well-crafted, and most of the people get it proper, however there’s solely so many regulators and inspectors to go round and we are able to’t delay too many hundreds for inspection or we’d gum up the entire financial system.

Response Is A Massive Half Of The Equation

One other vital factor to consider is how fireplace departments and different public security personnel reply to those incidents. If one thing like this occurs close to a hearth hydrant, it’s fairly simple to simply drown the crap out of the burning cells till the chemical response will get retarded sufficient to get the flames beneath management. It’s a fancier model of this joke:

However, when the accident occurs in the course of the desert and hundreds upon hundreds of gallons of water aren’t available, it’s powerful to take that method. So, improved strategies for coping with these sorts of rural fires are going to have to be developed.

Featured picture by the San Bernardino Fireplace Division (Public Area).