Strange battery failure

Well, for sure lithium reacts violently with water .. any chance it was wet?

GWE

Dan wrote:

A number of years ago, I had a lithium battery that was about the diameter of a fifty-cent piece and maybe 0.3" thick explode on a circuit board. It blew a fair sized hole through the board and filled my apartment with dense, rank smelling smoke. Whatever was in the smoke was corrosive as hell. Every exposed piece of metal in the enclosure was a mess within a few days. Even exposed metal that was on the bench with the system showed some corrosion. To this day, lithium batteries are my last choice for anything.

Good Luck, Bob

The cause for this, and the OP's failure, were both internal shorts in teh cells.

I was told that the batteries used by the military for their portable radios have the energy density of TNT, pound for pound.

Jim

Is there a way to release all that energy all at once? Bwahaha

Heating oil has about 10X the energy density of TNT, pound for pound.

You beat me to the punch. I was just about to reply about being lucky the lithium cell didn't explode or catch fire. I simply don't use lithium batteries at all. There is ALWAYS a better solution.

The corrosion may have been from Lithium Dioxide. Lithium "steals" the oxygen from water while liberating the hydrogen. The reaction is exothermic and can ignite the hydrogen.

-- JIm

Not all at once but I wouldn't cut a lithium battery in half and throw it into water.

-- Jim

I don't know what I was thinking!!! Should have been Lithium Hydroxide". Need more coffee!!!

-- Jim

I succeeded in releasing it close enough to all at once to blow a fair sized hole in a standard 0.060" FR4 (fiberglass laminate) circuit board by mistakenly trying to charge it!

Bob

Yes, at least I learned something from it. (standard quote when something is a total disaster)

If you look at the Chemical chart the first column runs like this :

Hydrogen, Li, Na, K Hydrogen (cars, floating bombs and the like); Lithium very reactive metal. Sodium metal - explodes in water - catches on fire in air - nice stuff kept under oil; Potassium - I want to say it is less explosive - but reactive for certain.

Martin Martin Eastburn @ home at Lions' Lair with our computer lionslair at consolidated dot net NRA LOH, NRA Life NRA Second Amendment Task Force Charter Founder

jimmy wrote:

Hmmmm. That makes me wonder about the safety of the new Lithium-Iron phosphate (trademarked: LiFe) batteries Pihsiang just brought out onto the market for powering wheelchairs, etc.

Have about four times the charge capacity as a same-size lead-acid battery and can be recharged in 85 minutes rather than the ten to twelve hours for a SLA or gel battery (Sealed Lead-Acid)

I have one very active wheelchair user customer who would be ecstatic to get such performance. He'd order two of the biggest ones he could get.

I would hope getting the batteries wet wouldn't launch him into LEO! :)

Yes, but diesel fuel won't spontaneously develop an internal short, dumping all that energy into itself at once. It has to be atomized and mixed with air.

Jim

or Ammonium No3 aka ANFO

Foreman

Anfo has fuel, usually diesel, but you're correct Ammonium Nitrate can be detonated in certain situations. Karl

gunndf

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the s*it out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner

Right. This takes at least a blasting cap.

Batteries like that can do the same thing. On their *own*, under certain circumstances. All the items discussed here (except the batteries) need to have a concious effort on the part of the user to make them go 'boom.'

Jim

Ah..Jim...there wasnt a blasting cap to be found in Texas City.

AN can indeed cook off on its own, given the proper conditions and composition.

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire. Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us) off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the s*it out of you for torturing the cat." Gunner

This was ANFO?

Jim

Actually, it was just the AN part, in bags, and a smouldering bag fire, and battening the hatches and injecting loads of live steam (normal ship firefighting practice, but exactly the wrong thing for AN). The crowd that gathered watched the fire hose water bounce off the ship's side like water drops on a hot skillet. When the hatches finally failed, the huge golden AN vapor cloud was seen by a light plane miles away before the detonation.

Dad was plowing 40 miles away, said it made a real sharp rifle crack sound, only so loud he had no problem hearing it over the John Deere "D". Approx. 600 dead. A coworker's father in law had been a dentist, was called in to help identify remains. He never worked again after that.

Pete Keillor