this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
347 points (95.8% liked)

News

23267 readers
4226 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

California firefighters had to douse a flaming battery in a Tesla Semi with about 50,000 gallons (190,000 liters) of water to extinguish flames after a crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday.

In addition to the huge amount of water, firefighters used an aircraft to drop fire retardant on the “immediate area” of the electric truck as a precautionary measure, the agency said in a preliminary report.

Firefighters said previously that the battery reached temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (540 Celsius) while it was in flames.

The NTSB sent investigators to the Aug. 19 crash along Interstate 80 near Emigrant Gap, about 70 miles (113 kilometers) northeast of Sacramento. The agency said it would look into fire risks posed by the truck’s large lithium-ion battery.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (40 children)

Maybe don't use water to put out a fire that can't be put out with water. Aren't these supposed to be professionals?

[–] simplejack@lemmy.world 0 points 1 month ago (2 children)

How many lithium ion battery fires have you put out?

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Two.

The best policy is to not puncture batteries, and train others to not do so.

The next best is to know to smother them.

[–] shoulderoforion@fedia.io 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

how do you smother a semi fire on the highway, a) with a water tanker or b) with a sand tanker, how many municipalities have a sand tanker on hand, how do those sand tanker hoses work again, lots of sand tanker slingers round your parts cowpoke?

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world -1 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] Goronmon@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago

Isn't that foam what we are discovered is leeching into ground-water supplies everywhere and is super unhealthy for everyone?

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Foam suppressant is appropriate for liquid fuel fires like oil. It is not appropriate for metal fires.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

You sure?

https://textechindustries.com/blog/how-do-you-extinguish-a-lithium-battery-fire/

To put out large lithium-ion battery fires, use a foam extinguisher containing CO2, powder graphite, ABC dry chemical, or sodium carbonate.

[–] brygphilomena@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Not who you responded to, but that's an interesting source. I'm intrigued by a textile company claiming to be experts in lithium ion fires.

It sounds more like options for preventing a fire to spread. It's also including CO2 extinguishers under "foam" which they very much aren't, making me doubt the rest of their blog post.

Extinguishing fires can work largely in two different ways. Either by smothering a fire or by cooling a fuel below it's flash point. Quite often they put out a fire by doing both. A fire that contains an oxidizer cannot be smothered, but smothering can help prevent other materials in a vehicle from being able to burn along with the batteries. Cooling down a large, vehicle sized lithium ion fires takes an incredible amount of water. However, the cells themselves contain so much energy that their failure produces more thermal energy than water is able to remove.

Is water the best to put out large EV fires? Nope.

Is water good at preventing fires from spreading? Yep.

Is water easily accessible and carried on every fire truck and engine and available through hydrants? Also yep.

A lot of agencies are including car sized fire blankets as well that help smother the fire some and make burnt/burning EVs safer for tow trucks to move to a safe locations where they can be left to burn out. Sometimes for over a month! You might see fire engines literally escorting tow trucks because even with the blanket and being doused with tens of thousands of gallons, it's still at risk of reigniting during transport.

The other big issue that agencies are facing with EV fires is that the water used to suppress these fires essentially becomes hazmat. So there are issues with letting it just run off into the storm system or the environment.

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 1 points 1 month ago

a foam extinguisher containing CO2, powder graphite, ABC dry chemical, or sodium carbonate

Huh? modern foam suppressants do not use dry chemicals or powders (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefighting_foam).

The Wikipedia article has this:

The original foam was a mixture of two powders and water produced in a foam generator. It was called chemical foam because of the chemical action to create it. In general, the powders used were sodium bicarbonate and aluminium sulfate, with small amounts of saponin or liquorice added to stabilise the bubbles. [...] Chemical foam is a stable solution of small bubbles containing carbon dioxide with lower density than oil or water, and exhibits persistence for covering flat surfaces.

Which sounds like what your article is talking about, but nobody uses that anymore, it's from 1904:

Chemical foam is considered obsolete today because of the many containers of powder required, even for small fires.

Was this article written by an LLM copying text from other sources? It's basically just an ad for this company's products. I wouldn't trust this source for real-world firefighting information.

[–] Paddzr@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Anyone dealing with batteries would have. It is more common than you think and not just people being keyboard warriors.

load more comments (37 replies)