Fire at South Korea lithium battery plant kills at least 16 people | Hacker News Reader

Fire at South Korea lithium battery plant kills at least 16 people

nbcnews.com

98 pointsrntn39 comments

Two weeks ago a large oil refinery in Irbil (northern Iraq) caught on fire, injuring 14 people with burns and smoke inhalation [1].

This is regrettable. I feel sorry for the people, and their families, who have been injured and killed in these accidents. Industrial activities are dangerous. We should recognize this. We do these activities because we want energy. This is news because battery factories are new, whereas other forms of energy have been around for over a hundred years. An oil refinery catching on fire may make the news, but it won’t get sensationalized or be editorialized as signs of a worrying new trend.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/world/firefighters-battle-mas...

I like to direct people to the US CSB's YouTube channel [0] to help demonstrate this. People's memory for something that's already happened before is short. We regularly have major accidents and loss of life in the hydrocarbon industry, but it's almost routine at this point, so people don't think about it.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/@USCSB

But if you watch all of those videos, a common theme is negligence and normalization of deviance due to management being cheap. If it's not news, every time it happens, it will keep happening. It doesn't matter what industry it's in.

Is it regrettable, or preventable? The fact that the oil refinery fire was not in the news is an indictment of how the news handles industrial disasters in general.

These are apparently not large EV-type rechargeable lithium batteries, as I immediately assumed.

From the article: "Aricell makes lithium primary batteries for sensors and radio communication devices". A "primary battery" is non-rechargeable; and given the use-cases mentioned I expect each individual battery is fairly small.

Of course, when there are 10s of 1000s of them together that's still a lot of energy to burn.

And the large type batteries are just made up of a bunch of smaller cells, typically. Stuff that can fit in a flashlight.

Primary, non-rechargeable lithium batteries typically contain metal lithium [0], and are actually more likely to catch fire when mishandled, compared to Li-ion stuff.

Specifically, most common Li-ion fires start when overcharged (especially with high current and in cold), and from short-circuits (e.g. when pierced). But only have a very small chance of spontaneously igniting from just disassembly alone [1]. Still non-zero chance, don't open them!

Primary/metal lithium batteries, on the other hand, are much more likely to burst into flames when opened. Notably, lithium-iron disulfide (AA/AAA "alkaline replacement") cells are notorious to do that just from air exposure, even if one is very careful to not short/pierce anything.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_metal_batteries

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI1eRy0uBI8

Very much more than likely just a coincidence borne of a widespread industry dealing with a hazardous product, but it's strange to me that this happens alongside a major fire incident at a Scottish lithium recycling plant and so soon after the Russia/North Korea defence pact.

Given what's happening in Ukraine, lithium-powered drones of various types are clearly changing the game over there. It would, to me, make sense to 'cause problems' in that production pipeline.

*removes lithium-foil hat

It's true that drones have rather specific lithium batteries - the foils are thicker so the batteries can be charged and discharged faster than eg. mobile phone batteries.

However, any lithium battery plant could, within a matter of days, be reconfigured to make drone-suitable batteries.

Also, currently drones use a tiny proportion of the worlds battery production capacity. EV's and consumer electronics use vastly more. This capacity could easily be redirected.

So attacking the battery production capacity as a way to limit the enemies drone production doesn't seem like the smart move.

Sabotage activity by Russian agents has been spotted in many areas of Europe. It could spread to South Korea, too.

Not much enlightening I can add to such a story, but I am thankful to the many people who work dangerous jobs that are needed to support the modern world.

I remember seeing a video of someones work at a battery factory, and their job was putting out fires. Every 10 minutes or so, one of the batteries on a test/charging station would catch fire, and they had a special set of grippers and fire resistant gloves to pick that battery up and drop it in a bucket of sand.

Sometimes there were so many batteries on fire at once the fire started spreading to neighbouring ones and they couldn't keep up and their bucket (and the spare) got full before they could empty it out.

It was eye-opening...

I've been trying to find the video you're mentioning but can't find anything, do you happen to have a link?

That's because it doesn't exist, it is anti-battery propaganda.

On a test rig you can reasonably expect batteries to catch fire, actually you want to know how much you can put them through - the key thing is to check if battery samples catch fire sooner than intended (i.e. specs + significant safety margin).

Otherwise, you get scenarios like cheap Alibaba e-scooters, hoverboards and e-bikes catching fire from using batteries that weren't tested that rigorously.

If you’d construct a torture test rig, you’d construct it for easy egress and probably put your fire control container right next to or below it.

For sure, there are many R&D scenarios where testing to failure is an important part of the process. In the manufacturing process though — not so much.

Watch this anti-EV propaganda instead then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUfwb7yj7wA

If you think that was wild, try to watch some videos of what oil rig workers are doing. They earn a lot of money, but the risk they are constantly exposed to is insane.

I watched a YT video of some oil workers swinging a chain around. Because that is the tool for screwing and unscrewing drilling pipe sections. Now imagine that thing gets wrapped around someone's arm or leg? And they are moving hyperfast too.

We need sodium batteries for safety reasons. Unfortunately their performance so far is sub par

Source? China is starting to deploy them in large scale.

You can buy sodium 18650 cells today - at the moment their parameters are worse across the board.

That being said they're much safer. For instance you can discharge them to 0V without serious consequences.

I for one will be purchasing a few to power things I want to leave somewhere for weeks at a time.

Unfortunately in terms of BMSes there's not much of a selection.

I think sodium batteries can take the place of LiFePo but classic LiPo will always be ahead in terms of energy/volume.

I assume you're using "performance" to mean "kwh/kg", which is a bit of a narrow view. Even if they had have the gravimetric energy density, grid storage doesn't care about that. With an annual growth rate of 60~80% in the CAISO grid there's plenty of places to put lower density but safer batteries.

Perhaps 35 years ago I thought to replace an alkaline battery pack for a PC's CMOS memory and RTC with a 3v coin cell. The first step was to solder leads onto it. The second step was to leave the room in a hurry. The cell blew its end cap off and smoked vigorously for a while but no real damage was done.

We got to do that in school, was fun when you failed! :-)

What’s the procedure for even putting out a fire like that? Just wait it out?

Manage the spread of fire and heat damage to surroundings until the fire burns out.

Once the lithium fire gets going it is almost impossible to extinguish it.

Cooling them with lots of water generally. The challenge is that lithium ion battery fires supply their own oxygen (chemically released, which then combusts with the other gases). So starving them of oxygen doesn't work, generally.

Used to have a chemistry teacher that would entertain the class, by dropping a chunk of lithium into a big bowl of water.

Fun stuff. They don't make 'em like that, anymore.

On-topic: This took out half the workforce. Maybe almost everyone that gets their hands dirty. Not sure that company will survive this.

Devastating. Having read the article, it sounds like it wasn't a fire as much as a lithium-cell explosion, which would explain the damage and why people couldn't get to safety.

off-topic: My chemistry teacher also plopped chunks of lithium into bowls of water for our edutainment.

Not all lithium cell primary batteries contain oxygen.

depends on the electrolyte of course, which is generally one of the more flammable bits.

Doesn't water have the exact same problem in the context of electric charge? The water might get hydrolyzed, producing even more oxygen and giving you hydrogen gas as a bonus. "Lots of water" might be an understatement -- if you can't submerge the entire battery in water, don't even try it.

A "Class D" fire extinguisher, which contain powdered metals, or cover it in dry, fine sand, which you will need to have pre-placed for this purpose because you can't extinguish such a fire with damp sand.

Remarkable and interesting that powdered metals can be fire-extinguishing agents. I'd have guessed they'd be flammable themselves.

https://amerexfireextinguishers.com/products/amerex-30lb-cla... ("30 lb Class D Copper Fire Extinguisher - Model C571")

- "MODEL C571 contains a copper extinguishing agent specially developed by the U.S. Navy for fighting lithium and lithium alloy fires. The copper compound smothers the fire and provides an excellent heat sink for dissipating heat. Copper powder has been found to be superior to all other known fire extinguishing agents for lithium metal fires. Not recommended for lithium-ion battery fires."

Maybe it mitigates by alloying a bit.

Very unfortunate. I’m really rooting for South Korean battery manufacturing.

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