Battery

[John Teller]

I've actually bypassed all the safety features of your common 
garden-variety Li-Ion cells and subjected them to exactly the kinds of 
stresses I mentioned, and yes they all caught fire.  None exploded, 
however - thanks to properly designed venting systems.  They did burn 
hot enough for a short period to be able to ignite anything inflammable 
nearby - much more dramatic than venting a large electrolytic capacitor, 
for instance.

BTW - rebuilding a car's braking system is not particularly 
challenging.  Like wiring a house, it's only a matter of following 
proper procedures and not taking short cuts.  This is something that is 
not heeded by the manufacturers of most of what comes out of China these 
days - batteries included.

---JST


On 01/28/2014 07:58 PM, Phil wrote:
> Whilst lithium is a very reactive metal, and unpleasant incidents and even fatalities have occurred, the technology has advanced significantly and I believe that the dangers of lithium batteries are now significantly overstated. Whilst care and vigilance are to be encouraged, some of the stories are akin to the reasons why, in the UK at least, use of mobile phones at petrol stations has been banned for over a decade. There is not one authenticated case of a mobile phone starting a petroleum fire, and no experiment, no matter how ridiculous, has ever succeeded in getting a normal mobile phone to ignite flammable vapours (you can't do it with a lit cigarette, either).
>
> Meanwhile, lithium is the lightest metallic element, makes great batteries BECAUSE it is highly reactive under certain circumstances, and, most importantly, we are not going to run out of it for a very long time (unlike platinum and palladium; not every family in the world, even at present, will be able to have a hydrogen fuel cell car). Lithium battery technology is here to stay, folks, so get comfortable with it. Meanwhile, treat them with respect, remember that they are often made by an underpaid and poorly-educated workforce (because the West has priced labour out of competitiveness) and, if you don't know what the third terminal does, don't mess with it. Using the same logic, I regularly service and maintain mains-powered equipment with confidence, as well as having re-wired part of my house; but nothing would possess me to service the brakes on my car.
>
> Phil M1GWZ
>