Essay by Eric Worrall
Mike Gallagher, CEO of Ports Australia – “You can’t put them out. So you can imagine it on the street if you can’t put them out, imagine them on a vessel out at sea or in a port.”
Warning over electric scooter and bike batteries amid daily fires
By 9 News Staff 8:24pm Sep 22, 2024
…
Fire crews are noting a spate of explosions caused by lithium batteries found in e-scooters and e-bikes – and it could even happen when they’re being shipped to shops.
“The fires we’re encountering almost on a daily basis are from our smaller e-scooters, e-bikes type of batteries,” Darren Mallouk from Queensland Fire Department’s Investigation Unit told 9News.
…
Mike Gallagher, CEO of Ports Australia, said ship fires caused by these flammable batteries were virtually impossible to safely put out.
“They are packed like sardines inside a tin, except these are very dangerous sardines,” he said.
“You can’t put them out. So you can imagine it on the street if you can’t put them out, imagine them on a vessel out at sea or in a port.”
…
In 2022, a cargo ship carrying luxury vehicles including EVs sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
…
Read more (includes video): https://www.9news.com.au/national/lithium-battery-fires-firefighters-warning-over-electric-vehicles-ships/a1496745-3ef2-4660-be8d-c91f93713d04
The ferocity and speed of Lithium fires cannot be overstated, Lithium fires are more like tossing a match in a box of fireworks than a normal fire. The people in the video below were lucky to escape with their lives, there was no time to do anything but flee.
If professional firefighters struggle to extinguish lithium fires, nobody else should attempt it. Not only are you at risk of severe burns from exploding debris which are hot enough to melt steel, The fumes from Lithium are horribly poisonous.
Lithium is a powerful psychoactive. In small doses Lithium has therapeutic value in treating manic depressive disorders, but patients on Lithium have to have regular blood tests to minimise the risk of Lithium poisoning. Even at therapeutic doses Lithium can cause a variety of short and (if you are unlucky) long term insidious physiological ailments, including dementia like brain injuries, known as Lithium Neurotoxicity.
Even if firefighters control the blaze and save the house, would you really want to live in a house contaminated by Lithium? Sooner or later insurers will catch on that even if adjacent structures survive the blaze, there is a significant lingering litigation risk from people claiming their health was damaged by exposure to lithium.
Ship transport is the only part of the Lithium risk profile which seems fixable with current technology. The Lithium could be transported in a non-flammable form, such as Lithium carbonate, minimising the risk of fire. Though Lithium carbonate is still a dangerously toxic substance, applying similar protocols to transportation of other toxic substances should suffice for non flammable forms of lithium.
But converting non flammable forms of Lithium into batteries is very energy intensive, it requires lots of cheap energy – something green obsessed Western nations are struggling to provide to industry. So ships and their crews continue to risk their lives transporting unstable forms of Lithium such as finished Lithium batteries, to help green politicians maintain the fiction they are reducing CO2 emissions.
Related