Container loaded with discarded lithium batteries catches fire enroute to port | Hacker News Reader

Container loaded with discarded lithium batteries catches fire enroute to port

gcaptain.com

140 pointsharambae97 comments

The real crime here was lying on the bill of lading to get around shipping restrictions. Lithium batteries do sometimes cause fires, and sometimes big ones, but we have some safety mechanisms to help with that kind of thing. You can’t put any of them in place if you lie about what you’re shipping

Having worked in this space, it has been drilled into my head a zillion times that making a willful error like this puts you in big trouble with all kinds of powerful regulatory groups, even if there is no accident.

I can only imagine the consequences after there is an accident.

I'm familiar with the industry. Everyone involved knows that you don't move so much as a mobile phone's worth of lithium without following a procedure. In my experience small violations are wilful laziness, large violations are to avoid the signficant costs involved with dangerous goods documentation, packaging, and handling. This container didn't get onto the truck without several people deciding not to do things they're trained and certified to do.

As someone else who tangentially operates in this space (and formerly directly), I can concur.

It might sound strange to those unfamiliar, but the “low level admins” who fill out the DG Declarations do for the most part, in my experience, take this part of the job very seriously. Along with entire chain going all the way up to loadmasters, CBP agents, pilots, etc who do final checks on all this. A lot of people lied and heads will definitely now roll.

>. Everyone involved knows that you don't move so much as a mobile phone's worth of lithium without following a procedure. In my experience small violations are wilful laziness, large violations are to avoid the signficant costs involved with dangerous goods documentation, packaging, and handling. This container didn't get onto the truck without several people deciding not to do things they're trained and certified to do.

Sure, ok <rolls eyes>.

Everyone who has experience in any industry knows that things get sloppier as you go down market. And it doesn't really get any lower than recycling/scrap. From my experience in industrial recycling (not consumer electronics) I'd bet those "several people not doing their jobs" are all one administrative assistant that fills out all the paperwork the same way every time unless told otherwise.

> From my experience in industrial recycling (not consumer electronics) I'd bet those "several people not doing their jobs" are all one administrative assistant that fills out all the paperwork the same way every time unless told otherwise.

If you're aware of such transgressions and haven't said or done anything about it, you're part of the problem. Whistleblowers get legal protection, and a number of US TLAs involved in regulation enforcement do give bonuses, sometimes as a percentage of fines successfully imposed on the offenders. I know SEC gives such bonuses, I'd wager EPA, NHTSB, OSHA and others may do as well for illegal transportation of hazardous materials.

Scrap and waste disposal is also a market with a large amount of organized crime involvement. Chance are the shipping company has already disappeared, to be reopened under another name and registration soon. They can move faster than the regulators can follow them.

It doesn't have to be malicious to be incredibly reckless

Lithiums are nothing to treat carelessly. Friend of mine had a good quality drone battery catch their room on fire. Could not put out the battery, had to scoop it and put it outside until it stopped. The only reason it didn't burn the house down was due to flame retardant materials things are made out of nowadays and they caught it fast enough.

Manufacturing by it's nature has defects, get metal containers for your lithium charging and don't cheap out on batteries. If you have old lithium batteries from laptops, drones, etc, dispose of them at a local transfer station properly. Or at a minimum locate them in something metal that has a lid in an area where open flame would not readily catch something on fire.

I have the dubious distinction of having burned down three acres of Stanford's Lake Lagunita with a Li Po battery after crashing a drone (this was a soft pack for a DIY drone). We had been meticulous about charging and handling safety, but they still light off like fireworks if punctured. Seven years later, I'm still terrified of these batteries and treat them like explosives.

You could start a fire with an ordinary alkaline battery used in the right way, and these things pack way more energy.

based on your post, not sure if this was a consumer drone battery like a DJI or similar with its own enclosure, battery charging dock/station, or a DIY hobbyist/quadcopter battery such as you might see if you bought a 6s 4000mAH lipo for a 8" FPV quadcopter.

for the latter, the people I know who build and use such things always charge their batteries in an attended environment in some sort of mostly-fireproof setup. one has a small corner of their tech/hobby workbench that has a few 12" ceramic floor tiles stuck to a box like enclosure open on one side.

since lipos are damaged and degrade if held for long times at 4.2V full state of charge, it's recommended for the health of the battery to only charge it almost immediately before you want to use it. ideally you would do that while nearby and paying attention, not leaving it totally unattended.

example would be something like this

https://chinahobbyline.com/shop/detail/RcCar-22.2V(6S)/CNHLg...

the quality of the battery charger also matters. and be absolutely certain you're using the correct goal float voltage setting, charge rate in amps or C rating, etc.

https://www.racedayquads.com/collections/isdt-products/produ...

i have also heard of people who use a surplus steel ammo can (plentiful and cheap in many parts of the USA) for battery charging and lipo storage.

> a DIY hobbyist/quadcopter battery such as you might see if you bought a 6s 4000mAH lipo for a 8" FPV quadcopter.

6S 4000mAhr is getting seriously into "do not fuck around with this" territory. they deserve to be treated like and equivalent weight of gasoline.

My quadcopters these days are mostly small to tiny. (It's been years since I flew anything above the 250g size that changes the rules here.) In the past, I've flown medium/big hexa and octocopters with 7S 5800mAhr batteries (two of them on the big Octo) Those batteries never came in my house. They are stored and charged in a besser block and concrete tile enclosure in my garage which has a direct metal vent pipe to the outside. They get transported in the car in an ammo can half full of sand, never more than two in the one can.

I've only once ever had one of those go off on me - in an ammo can while charging it at the field. Burying it with sand didn't put it out - it just happily burned away and got hot enough to distort the ammo can. I do not ever want that to happen anywhere near anything flammable that I care about.

I still have 4 of those big packs, I use them on an electric bicycle. I kinda hope that if I ever get mown down in traffic while riding it, it'll set fire to the car that nailed me...

I'm much less safety-nazi with my smaller lips batteries though. I store and charge 3 and 4S batteries in the 500 - 2200 mAhr range in my office - in metal tins with small-sh vent holes and watchable lids. I mistreat those batteries somewhat - my fastest quad can draw ~120A at full throttle on a fresh off charge pack (note that you do that for long, it's pretty much vanished straight up in about a second and a half when you do that. It's pretty much impossible to fly that one LOS, without the goggles I'd just lose it instantly.)

> 6S 4000mAhr is getting seriously into "do not fuck around with this" territory. they deserve to be treated like and equivalent weight of gasoline.

I will note that your average laptop has a battery between half that size and matching that size.

I trust my laptop battery far more than the LiPos I get for my R/C cars, though. Laptop batteries don't seem to go up in flames nearly as often.

Laptop batteries are also discharged at a much lower c rate, and are encapsulated much more robustly than a bunch of lipo cells welded together to make a 6s pouch

serious professional UAS pilots who fly with large collections of batteries specifically choose battery packs that are approximately 99Wh per pack, which fits within common IATA requirements for carry on luggage. on really big UAS such as for cinematic filming purposes these will commonly be connected in series for a 12S string. An interesting loophole which is applied differently, by different airlines, is that you can have multiples of 99 watt hour battery packs individually carried into the cabin, as long as they are discrete units.

another interesting note is that a number of $2000-3000 (USD) gaming laptops are also equipped with 99Wh nominally rated battery packs so that they're still legal to take on an airplane. I was recently shopping for a new gaming laptop and ran into this while evaluating the specs of 11th/12th gen Intel series things from the usual Taiwanese vendors (asus, msi) and their ryzen 5xxx based offerings.

> 6S 4000mAhr is getting seriously into "do not fuck around with this" territory.

yes indeed.

I've recently been involved with the design of some fairly large 18650 and 21700 cell based battery packs for designs that closely approach the manufacturer datasheet rated maximum continuous amp draw per cell.

my main message for the people who use these is the following: "any sufficiently advanced battery in serious amount of energy storage, becomes indistinguishable from a bomb or incendiary device, if you look at it from the point of view of watt-hours stored per kilogram of mass"

My desktop machine caught fire one day while I was using it. The graphics board connector started burning. I immediately pulled the plug on it, which put the flames out, and put the machine outside.

When I got the machine repaired, I bought some sheet steel and it now sits on that instead of the wood floor. The case was metal, so I was lucky there. I'll only be buying metal cases for my desktops from now on.

I was very lucky I was in the room when it ignited.

Given the amount modern GPU's are requiring that doesn't seem such a rare occurrence. During some game sessions, my 3080 will max out the capacity of my consumer UPS and ponder if a loose pin on the power connectors could cause a spark enough to jump the connectors. I guess my only saving fate is I let my computer sleep when not in use.

It's not a spark, it's a loose connection. This causes higher resistance, which generates heat, which melts the insulation and then makes it worse. Even though it's only 12V, there's enough amps flowing to cause plenty of issues.

My drone/rc plane loving friend has built a concrete box on a garden outside the house to store all the high density batteries there for this very reason.

This was a huge turn-off for wearables like the the Oura ring. When you do metal work, you take off rings because if a bead of molten metal gets on your very conductive gold ring, you won't be able to get it off, and it's a quick way to get a second-degree burn. Also, "degloving." My fear with these rings is if the battery goes, it's burn time. I can't find enough specs to know if the battery holds enough energy to do this, but my fingers are worth too much to me to take this chance.

Edit: the battery is .0777 Wh. If that burnt up in 10 seconds, that'd be 30 W concentrated on a square cm of skin, then distributed around the ring. I think that's a burn?

A few years back I had a Samsung smart watch, and one day I was sitting at my desk and started to feel an uncomfortable burning feeling from it. It managed to give me a little first degree burn on my wrist before I got it off. I rebooted it, and shortly afterwards it did it again, so it's been sitting in a drawer ever since. The only thing close to an explanation I found online was that if it needs to do something intensive like sync 100 SMS messages it can overheat. TBH, though, I think walking around with a cell phone in my front pocket all day is more of a risk.

It's a burn, but not a very bad one.

that's 300 Joules, a typical .22 long rifle round delivers about 180 J

Cycling on a gym bike for 1 second is also 300 Joules... It all depends how it's delivered!

So IEEE 1584 actually defines the boundary for second degree burns to unprotected skin at > 5.0 J/cm^2 [0]. Assuming the parent comment parameters of 0.0777 Wh discharging thermally over 10 seconds into ~1cm^2 of finger, that is ~27 joules per cm^2 per second for 10 seconds.

I think you would probably lose the finger.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arc_flash#Distance

Likewise we had a battery (don't know if it was a drone battery or for GPS equipment or some other device) burst into flame here at work, charging on someone's desk in their cube. Gouts of evil black smoke rising to the drop-ceiling. We chucked that sucker in a handy bucket and took it outside, now we keep a bucket of sand under the designated charging station desk, just in case.

How would you maintain say 1-3 live, powered on laptops and 6-8 in cold storage (but still used)?

Full metal cabinet preferably away from anything flammable is the simplest solution.

For real? Is there anyone who doesnt just leave their laptop on their desk when not in use?

Just thinking about a typical household these days, say a family of four. That's 4 smartphones, say 3 laptops, probably 1-2 tablets. In my house theres a lot more because every AA, AAA, etc. are lithium ion rechargeable anymore which includes video game console controllers, physical remotes for TVs and other devices, and so on. Also everyone owns a tablet of some sort and a laptop. Not saying these will create a humongous exploiting by themselves but each and everyone is a potential ignition source to start a real fire. You'd have to isolate and protect all of these things, regularly, to really add fire protection to your home.

> every AA, AAA, etc. are lithium ion rechargeable

Are you actually using Li-ion rechargeable AA and AAA cells? Those exist, but because they put out 3.7 volts, are pretty uncommon. Almost all household rechargeable AA and AAAs are nickle metal hydride, which is a much less volatile chemistry (and puts out 1.2 volts, making it mostly drop-in compatible with alkaline cells).

There are plenty of lithium-ion rechargeable AA and AAA cells which put out 1.5v; they have an internal buck regulator that converts the 3.7v to the 1.5v that your device expects.

Interesting, never heard of that. Got any brand recommendations?

I've used the Pownergy batteries; I don't know how good they are relative to other brands but they work well enough. They charge over a micro-usb cable.

Panasonic eneloops?

Those are NiMH.

We have a metal "charging station" in the living room. It's the only place our laptops, tablets, and batteries in general are charged.

Phones are charged in bedrooms overnight though. But I figure this setup is better than having random electronics charging in random places everywhere in the house.

My devices just sit on a desk lol. I have two laptops working as servers in another room.

But if you wanted to be safer from a potential fire, a metal cabinet is the simplest way to do it.

A deflagration from a lithium battery would just heat it up a bit, maybe start burning other stuff inside, but it's highly unlikely to spread beyond that as it would fizzle out due to lack of fuel (also temperature).

> and 6-8 in cold storage (but still used)

There's a difference in risk between one machine and 6-10+

There was a story about ship full of shiny new Volkswagens sinking to the bottom of the ocean: https://m.slashdot.org/story/396813 Bad source, German newspapers had more detailed reports in German. Basically burning ship with electric cars can’t be saved. That’s probably also valid for discarded batteries.

Maybe a stupid question, but does a Li-ion battery need to be charged in order to burn like this?

I'm not talking about the batteries that start the fire. Obviously they won't cause an electrical fire if they're not charged. I'm talking about the other batteries nearby that get heated up by the initial fire.

Most lithium ion batteries contain mixtures of liquid organic carbonates as electrolytes. They range from moderately to very flammable. Here's some vendor information on dimethyl carbonate, one of the more flammable electrolyte components:

https://smc-global.com/dimethyl-carbonate/

https://smc-global.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/M3574_DIME...

These liquids can burn regardless of the battery state of charge.

Sort of like how a transformer explosion is typically a lot worse due to the oil used to cool larger transformers. The oil is great because it allows for heat transfer well, fits into all the nooks and crannies and isn't conductive to electricity. But, the oil is still flammable. And then, trying to put out the flames, the combination of electricity and oil makes using water a very bad idea.

This is true, but pretty badly misstating the risk analysis. Lithium electrolytes are, on the whole, "flammable" in exactly the same way that things like grain shipments are flammable. It's a real risk, and requires engineering to address. They aren't remotely "dangerous" materials.

Incidentally, besides the flammability, the electrolyte is otherwise quite harmless. It's comparable to ether, alcohol, or acetone.

There are other components in the battery which are both toxic and corrosive to electronics. Please be careful of any broken batteries and if there is a fire don't breath the fumes!

They cannot be fully discharged without permanently damaging the cells, so Li-ion batteries are always shipped with some charge.

Yes - even Lithium Ion batteries which are practically dead may combust if the pouch is pierced (in pouch based ones of course). I recall vaguely shipping standard operating procedure of around 10% charge for bulk batteries and 50% charge for electronics which contain them but don't quote me on those numbers. But either way more energy means bigger, more, and longer lasting flames.

Actually most RoRo carriers, once they start to burn sink with the fire being unextinguishable.

Oil, Gas & Tires burn well enough. No batteries needed.

based on recent mishaps for "pure car carrier" RoRos they seem to have catastrophic failures based on being top-heavy or ballast problems, I can recall at least 3 within the past 20 years that have toppled over on their sides in catastrophic events that are non fire related.

Or leaving the doors open: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-25446228 . I've deliberately linked a page to the memorial. Plenty of links to the cause.

If you're trying to be respectful by deliberately linking to a memorial, it's rather undermined by linking to one for a completely different disaster from what you're describing. The European Gateway collided with another ship. Doors being left open was the Herald of Free Enterprise.

while I wouldn't say that it's a totally "solved" problem, some of the terrible mishaps of bow doors on roro ships that occurred in the past 30-40 years seem to have led to much more stringent operational and engineering standards for door locking and latching systems.

Believe it's the battery short and discharge that starts the heat and fire. And to prevent damaging the batteries they ship them 50% charged

Newer electric cars are LiFePo and don't catch fire and are less dangerous

While LiFePO4 is a safer chemistry than batteries using NMC, they can absolutely still catch fire. The only Lithium based chemistry that I know off that you might be able to describe as "don't catch fire" is Lithium Titanate/Titanium Oxide (LTO), but even then, in a bad enough situation I believe it will still ignite though briefly but won't sustain. LiFePO4 will still ignite and sustain a fire from the demonstration videos I have seen.

I don't know enough about the "Blade" battery chemistry but early info I have seen seems to indicate a very high level of safety as well, more so than current LiFePO4 setups.

The blade battery is LoFePO4 and the video released show them only heating and smoking after being punched and short circuited

Well if you watch YouTube most nail puncher tests of LFP don't catch fire. There is one video were someone hammers two holes in the battery and it catches fire

>Basically burning ship with electric cars can’t be saved.

The fire was put out and it was being towed to port when it sank in heavy seas. The battery cars may or may not have caused the fire, we just don't know.

Should be a criminal act for whoever mis-declared the contents on the bill of lading.

From personal experience, someone who orchestrates this sort of crime sets up a fall guy. The person who mis-declared the contents is probably just a pawn. It is surprisingly easy to manipulate young ambitious people, ideally from poor immigrant roots who have been preconditioned to observe a code of silence, if the senior person implies it is a routine business practice. Then they get caught, the fog lifts, and they blame themselves because the prosecutor/investigator has a rock-solid case.

The thing is, 99.99% of the people calling for blood are satisfied with the fall guy's blood.

The real question is who is underwriting the cleanup effort. If the orchestrator is paying the insurance bill, the problem may solve itself.

Google "total reclaim Seattle" for some similar examples

Watch battery fires have taken down a number of aircraft.

“Caused to land safely”.

I wonder what percentage of flights do have something like this kit onboard?

https://cellblockfcs.com/libik-dry-fire-suppression-kits-cab...

Also what happens when the fire is only noticed after burning in eg an overhead compartment?

Fire on flight really is a terrible scenario.

Airliners actually have crashed due to lithium battery fires. [1]

[1] https://apnews.com/article/709370476f2645f299beb6c8c66d216b

I think the comments above were talking about carry-on batteries, which are a different level of concern. Five of the planes in your link had shipments of batteries and the other one was a passenger with 25+ batteries in the cargo hold.

> The bill of lading listed “computer parts,” not lithium batteries, making responding to the fire more challenging.

> the shipper failed to properly placard, label, mark and package the lithium batteries, and identified the cause of fire to be residual charge/full circuit, which led to a thermal increase.

This made me think of my growing pile of electronics with lithium batteries collecting dust in my basement. These are things that still have some value, but low enough value that they're hard to sell online. Any tips on what to do with them?

Depends where you live and what stuff you have.

In Switzerland I would call the local «Werkhof» and ask what to do. Probably just bring them and declare as electronic waste. Perhaps try to discharge them first by putting them into electronics and turning on, but it depends what lithium batteries you have, and this might be even dangerous.

Just do a general cleanup. This might need a lot of time, and if you are really afraid, do this outside when it's dry outside. Avoid to handle batteries which are inflated or show some damage.

Is a lithium battery that is discharged still dangerous?

Yes, but less so. Much of the chemical energy and ignition potential is removed by discharging the battery, but many of the remaining components (electrolyte as an example) are still flammable.

Will it still self-ignite, though?

If punctured or heated sufficiently it definitely can self-ignite, especially if the battery had some wear and tear. The resulting fire (or explosion) will be a lot less spectacular than if the battery were fully charged, but all lithium batteries can be dangerous if treated badly.

Free startup idea: through-the-wall lithium battery sensing, for safety checks throughout the supply-chain..

I was thinking rethinking the supply chain to avoid shipping batteries assembled in cars, or having ships designed for lithium battery fires.

It looks like the people shipping them will lie about their cargo's contents despite likely knowing their danger

Yeah, but we just had a car carrier sink with 4000 cars.

As EVs become more popular those accidents will occur more frequently

I feel like discharging the batteries before amassing them like this would solve these kinds of problems. Yes I know it's a hard problem, but still.

Yet more evidence that k8s is too complex

I just hope in decades to come I don't see this headline

"Turns out Li ion batteries are worst than fossil fuels for future of Earth"

Pretty sure over a century ago nobody thought that these Fossil fuels are going to screw the Earth so bad.

Our civilization has come so far but we do have stupid tendency to abuse natural resources and let future generations deal with consequences.

>Pretty sure over a century ago nobody thought that these Fossil fuels are going to screw the Earth so bad.

They did.

https://qz.com/817354/scientists-have-been-forecasting-that-...

Sure scientists do. But we the collective fails to adapt

That is a complete nonsequitor- batteries catch fire and are therefore worse than fossil fuels?

It doesn't make any sense even in worst cases like "elements of batteries somehow spread across the atmosphere like nuclear fallout". Leaded gasoline already did far worse than even large amounts of trace elements dissipated.

two thoughts:

- there's people trying to make this case currently

- when we scaled fossil fuels, terraforming was pure science fiction only, not something anyone realistically expected. it only started to become visible some 50 years later.

I don't think we'll make the same mistakes, but there'll always be new and more expensive mistakes to make.

Lithium iron phosphate (LiFePo4) is significantly safer in this aspect.

As are NiMH batteries.

Would the alternative be to go back to fossil fuels? That seems to be the implication of like 9/10 anti-lithium battery comments I see.

I am not anti-battery lol. I am just saying we need to do thorough analysis of what we use before it screws us.

Synthetic fuels could be a reasonable alternative. They could be carbon neutral.

One day maybe wireless power.

I mean, we need portable energy storage.

Could definitely use better filtering for fossil fuel exhaust.

Oil catches fire too, you know.

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