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.
Lithium is a metal right? Putting water on a metal fire usually just makes the fire worse.
Lithium isn’t just a metal it’s a metal that has a rapid exothermic reaction with water. Or at least that’s what I remember my high school Chem teacher saying.
That’s when it’s not even on fire, right? Like pure sodium or aluminium (I forget which one combusts in water and which was just the air)?
Pure sodium can react with the moisture in the air. (If I recall correctly).
Aluminium is used in drink cans and is very inert. Aluminium shavings can burn though and they’re difficult to extinguish.
Pure elemental aluminum isn’t stable. The aluminum used in cans and such is an alloy and not pure elemental aluminum. My chemistry teacher blew a hole in the ceiling tiles of the classroom when he showed this off. The sodium didn’t react nearly as violently (but he also used a much smaller chunk).
Are you referring to the immediate oxidation of the outer layer when exposed to air?
aluminum is stable in the sense that the outer layer oxidizes rapidly and prevents the rest of the metal from reacting with anything. the reason thermite is so exothermic is because of massive amount of surface area provide by the powdered metal. a chunk of aluminum simply isn’t dangerous.
You are right, but in the case of a Lithium battery fire the strategy is to use the large thermal capacity of water to cool the battery until the reaction is done.
I just remembered i can even name myself as a source when i fucked up and punctured my phone battery while disassembling it (those dumbasses used large amounts of adhesives to mount the battery and i wasn’t careful enough). I simply dropped it into a bucket of water and waited it out.