Lithium powered boat destroyed in Northamptonshire

[Jurassicspark]

My understanding is that, at least with some of the chemistries, oxygen can be produced at the positive electrodes. However, I'm not sure that this is necessarily particularly relevant, since I also believe that the situations in which very high temperatures, hence potentially fires, arise are largely due to chemical reactions which have noting to do with oxygen.

How can you acknowledge oxygen generation at the electrode and then claim it's irrelevant to fire risk when oxygen is the fundamental driver of combustion?

 

[Jurassicspark]

which have noting to do with oxygen.

If released oxygen isn’t part of the combustion process would you claim that fires burn in a vacuum?

 

[Jurassicspark]

while allowing the battery to fully self destruct

We wouldn’t do that with a gas leak, a fuel tanker, or a chemical warehouse.

Forest fires for example we don't say "just protect nearby towns or houses” we get aerial units, firebreaks and coordination across agencies etc

It’s like saying, “Well, the lion got into the zoo enclosure let’s just guard the gift shop and hope for the best.”

That’s not firefighting that’s fire babysitting.

We don’t just await.

Why do it with a lithium ion battery?

 

[JohnW2]

We wouldn’t do that with a gas leak, a fuel tanker, or a chemical warehouse.

Is that not precisely what the fire services do ('have to do') with some fires?

Forest fires for example we don't say "just protect nearby towns or houses” we get aerial units, firebreaks and coordination across agencies etc

I would have thought that with forest fires etc., what they primarily do is attempt to stop/reduce the spread of the fire, rather than seriously attempting to extinguish the established blaze? That is, for example, the thinking behind the creation of firebreaks and the aerial driopping of water onto areas that have not yet ignited, isn't it?

'Conventional'fires can usually be addressed by oxygen-deprivation and/or cooling, which can often be achieved with water/foam etc. However, when the 'fire' is die to a chemical reaction which is not oxygen-dependent, one is left with just the cooling, and that can be very difficult with an ongoing exothermic chemical reaction which threatens to go into 'thermal runaway'.

I recently saw on a TV program an EV that had somehow caught on fire (I think it was a 'hybrid' and that it had started as a petrol-related fire) and (as indicated by their thermal cameras etc.) the batteries were at risk of thermal runaway. Having cooled everything as much as they could, they ended up having to move the vehicle (with a fire engine escort) to a place where they could drop it into a giant skip full of water.