As Batteries Keep Catching Fire, U.S. Safety Agency Prepares For Change
npr.org
npr.org
Anything bigger than a phone should go this route. Boosted skateboards and the new generation of UL-approved hoverboards already have. Electric bicycles, which have a tendency to catch fire, need to.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery - has the numbers specific to LiFePO4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery - discusses the various variations of Li batteries. Mentions that "Handheld electronics mostly use LIBs based on lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2), which offers high energy density, but presents safety risks, especially when damaged." and goes on about the alternatives.
DeWalt had a recall about back in 2000 due to battery fires triggered by a charger that didn't turn off properly [1]. They apparently decided to switch to lithium iron phosphate, and no further problems were reported. If power tools were still catching fire, there would be Youtube videos. There are some videos of fires of early DeWalt models.[2]
[1] http://www.dewalt.com/support/safety-notices-and-recalls/201... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JJZfjzwuvM
Personally, I would prefer the increased energy capacity of traditional Li-ion packs, and when properly designed they are extremely safe too.
Without a recall, that number keeps on climbing and nobody has any idea where it stops. 1% of phones exploded? 10%?
You obviously can't unexplode the ones that exploded already, but a recall is about the ones that haven't exploded yet.
Mobile phones with replaceable batteries aren't coming back, and good riddance.
Yes, as a matter of fact, that's exactly what the Note 7 debacle demonstrated. There was a quality problem that could cause fires. There was a single party who could be expected to take responsibility. Finally, there was a coordinated worldwide recall.
Problem solved, system working as intended. Sucks to be Samsung, of course, but the end result will be safer batteries for everyone.
Plenty of devices have replaceable batteries without them exploding, and if anything, a replaceable battery would let you say "hey, this battery is getting old, let's replace it" rather then continuing to use a device with an old, possibly failing battery.
Sorry, that's not going to happen. Get used to disappointment.
Also, plenty of phones have replaceable batteries, including new models, so I'll just keep buying them. Means I won't be buying Samsung, but that's just an extra bonus.
Maybe some other manufacturer will see the opportunity Samsung has given them to break into this niche.
You can't send plain faulty batteries back.
And they still don't know why it happened, They tried 2 different batteries from different manufacturers and it was still exploding.
Replaceable batteries will only address the pain of safety recalls and increase the risk of fires due to consumers choosing to buy cheaper off-brand batteries.
My statement, though, is not entirely to address just safety, but also planned obsolescence, and consumer convenience. I've always carried a spare battery since even my HTC WinMo "smartphone" days. Same with my PowerBook.
Personally I would never buy a cell phone with a built in battery. I always have spare batteries for my phones and frequently swap them out. It sure beats being tied to a charger, or plugging an external battery to an awkward and fragile USB connector.
Granted, you can do that anyway today if you go to an unauthorized shop for a replacement, or even get it yourself via Amazon/Ebay & co., but the general availability of shitty batteries for retail purchase would increase the size of the problem by an order of magnitude.
Point taken, absolutely. Hopefully the crappy ones are simply overstating their capacity instead of actually trying to reach it within volume/safety constraints (and cutting corners to do so), so they won't be as explosion prone - but indeed, valid point.
(I don't think it's that simple, but given the choice, I would take the tight seal)
Phones are already designed as throwaway trash to be discarded in 18 months (and if you somehow keep it for longer, the software industry will happily make it almost unusable within the next 2 years). Reduced reliability of a battery connector isn't a meaningful topic, and it never was - not even in the old dumbphone days.
http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/i6/Assessing-Safety-Lithium-I...
How many people in an aircraft say ~200. How many aircraft in the air say ~5,000. Now that 10 million is down to 2-3 per however often those 1 in 10 million chance is supposed to stand for.
At a rough guess, the number of cells that fail excitingly are probably a fraction of those that fail overall.
Definitely worth fixing if it's not too hard/expensive, but probably not worth spending much time worrying about it.
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1. Solar panels are made in China, Malaysia, the Phllippines, and Taiwan. (I think around 40% comes from China)
2. Solar panels are made from Quartz.
3. Quartz comes from mines, is abundant, can be found everywhere, and causes silicosis for miners.
4. Quartz is turned into silicon. —metallic grade silicon. We use this to harden steel. (requires a lot of heat) output = CO2 and Sulfur Dioxide. — not too bad. ;)
5. To purify the silicon into polysilicon you end up mixing hydrochloric acid with metalic-grade silicon = trichlorosilanes.
6. The trichlorosilanes mix with hydrogen that you add to the process.
7. Then bam, you get your polysilicon, and as well some nasty stuff called silicon tetrachloride.
8. For every 1 pound of polysilicon you make, you make 4 pounds of the nasty stuff-silicon tetrachloride.
10. Okay, so some green fanatics might tell you that you can just recycle this silicon tetrachloride stuff into new polysilicon because it requires less energy, but that’s unlikely because it costs a lot to do so.
11. If you’re a prudent manufacturer, you say “Fuck it.” and you just dump the silicon tetrachloride in an oil well.
12. It acidifies the soil and demolishes any water nearby.
13. Maybe one day we’ll manufacture the solar panels with ethanol instead of chlorine-compounds. — this would forego the nasty stuff — silicon tetrachloride.
14. That’s just the process to get polysilicon, there’s still a ton more to do and a ton of risks afterwards. But anyhow, let’s progress.
15. There’s got to be a better way, right?
16. Well there is, or so the hippies will proclaim.
17. There’s thin-film solar cells.
18. Most thin film cells are made from cadmium telluride and copper indium gallium selenide — often called CIGS
19. Usually you’ll layer these and splice in some cadmium sulfide.
20. Cadmium is carcinogenic.
21. You don’t want to be dumping cadmium all over junk yards, but that’s what happens to post-consumer waste.
----------- I'd even go as far as to say the nuclear disposal waste risks are an order of magnitude safer than a Solar future marked by silicon tetrachloride toxicity.
If there are any ChemE's in here, I'd love to hear their take on it. I'm polymer & Systems engr, so I don't go deep enough into the mfg process.
Quartz is not mined in a way that causes silicosis. It's so abundant that you can literally just pick it up off the ground, you don't need to go underground.
Silicosis comes from mining other things, and crushing rock in order to do so. Also from manufacturing that grinds or crushes rock.
> some nasty stuff called silicon tetrachloride.
Which if you simply mix with water makes hydrochloric acid and silicic acid, both of which are harmless in the environment, and are only a very short term problem when in high concentration. You could mix them with some water and drink it and it would not hurt anyone.
That cost, more than the recent election, will bring about change for the better.
[1] http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-samsung-...
.01% is crazy high.
Given the sheer magnitude of all the other things that may kill you before you even arrive at the airport, let alone the very act of hurdling through the sky at over 650mph in a thin aluminum tube filled with 36,000 gallons of highly flammable/explosive fuel... a phone catching fire is really not much of a factor when deciding to book a flight.
Over three years what percent of the devices would have had the issue?
There are some, but past Presidents have had great influence over regulatory outcomes.
> most [companies] would rather have the governments looking at the safety of products that they would jurors.
That would seem rational, but that's not how many companies think. For example, Wall Street, despite recent experience with catastrophic consequences, still actively resists regulation.
That's also a good example of the influence of Presidents. Bush deregulated Wall Street; for example, the SEC is supposed to be the consumer advocate but Bush put Wall Street insiders in charge of it (IIRC). Obama restored at least some regulation.
Regardless of that, the article describing the organization's role and approach was interesting.
Oh come on, the spin in the story was much worse than that. The direct quote from the chairman of the CPSC was: "My hope is now with the election and potential leadership change here, that that work is not scuttled".
Using loaded words like "scuttled" makes it quite clear that he's throwing shade at Trump.
There can be bias in the choice of story, or the choice of quotes, but sometimes the story is that there are opinions that disagree, which seems relevant in this case.
There have been a lot of concerns with changes that Trump might make. He himself has been very clear that he's going to make changes. In particular, Trump has been vocal about reducing regulations, and as I understand it, the CPSC is a regulatory agency. Seems pretty straight up to me.