Who insures these ships? At what price? Do they have an exclusion clause if any of the cars are EVs? Should EVs be shipped separately from their batteries? Do the crew have the right to know there are EVs aboard?
Still, there are compensations. The EV that has burnt at sea won't be the one to set your multi-storey carpark ablaze, eh?JH: True.
Will any tunnel operators decide to ban EVs from entry? Should they? Would you happily take the train through the Chunnel with EVs being carried? Would you happily take the Eurostar going in the other direction? How about ordinary car ferries? Would you be happy sleeping on an overnight ferry if there were EVs aboard?
I predict the Scotnaz government will boast it's saved lives by arranging that the islands have no decent ferry services. Such foresight!
Presumably the EVs aboard that ship are new. How much riskier are older EVs which might have suffered the odd minor collision or pothole bump?Further, EVs, being silent, must be at greater risk of colliding with deer. Would such a collision, at high speed, be enough to mean that the EV would be condemned as a write-off because of assumed damage to the battery?
Someone would surely attempt illicitly to recycle that presumably damaged battery. What safeguards are advisable? Put otherwise: EVs introduce the possibility of new, or greater, risks. Where's the evidence that people have tried to identify these and design equipment and operating procedures to cope with them?Under current manufacturer regulations which appeared only recently, apparently an EV must make the sound of a petrol engine when being driven. I know, I know, I haven't stopped laughing since I heard it.
The key word is lithium. It reacts violently when exposed to the atmosphere and has to be stored either in a vacuum or an inert atmosphere. Those that allow EVs on ships with open decks must only have two brain cells, both fighting for third place. Water, especially salt water will short a battery and crack the case. But either way, all it takes is to expose the lithium to oxygen.
An electric bus, for your amusement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r-yN8SugWMJH: I’m running Dearieme’s as a post at OoL tomorrow morning, with Ripper’s added, plus the video as video.
But, Ripper, according to Wokeypedia, it's not elemental lithium that the battery uses. "Generally, the negative electrode of a conventional lithium-ion cell is graphite made from carbon. The positive electrode is typically a metal oxide. The electrolyte is a lithium salt in an organic solvent." ...
"The electrolyte salt is almost always lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF
6), which combines good ionic conductivity with chemical and electrochemical stability" It seems it's the electrolyte - I assume they mean the organic solvent part - that's the problem:
"Lithium-ion batteries can be a safety hazard since they contain a flammable [liquid] electrolyte ..."
This chap is more direct and helpful: "It is these organic solvents which are the leading fire hazard in Li-ion batteries. Furthermore, the positively charged electrode ... in the battery contains oxygen, which may be released if the battery is subjected to specific stresses, e.g., internal short, excessive heat, and more. This means that the Li-ion batteries have all the elements needed to self-sustain a fire."
That means the bloody things contain both their own combustion fuel and their own combustion oxidant. Dear oh dear.
https://mozees.no/phd-blog-why-do-lithium-ion-batteries-catch-fire-or-explode/#:~:text=This%20means%20that%20the%20Li,and%20hydrofluoric%20acid%20(HF).And lastly, this chap draws a useful distinction between lithium batteries - not our worry here - and lithium-ion batteries.
https://www.waste360.com/safety/april-2020-fire-report-how-why-do-lithium-ion-batteries-fail-insight-jedi-master-lithiumDM, there are about 6 flavours of lithium batteries, the safest being LiFePo, however it doesn't have the energy density of L-ion. The word 'safest' not meaning 'safe' of course.
I'm no chemist but the chap you quoted seems on the money. The bottom line being that, bring lithium into contact with oxygen and you will have a fire. I've been over this subject many times on the bike forum. It doesn't matter whether the lithium is elemental or not, lithium is lithium at the end of the day, a fact that everybody seems to overlook. Even in a suspension, lithium molecules coming into contact with oxygen are volatile. One thing I didn't previously know is that the electrolyte is naturally flammable which just aggravates the problem.
Of course Lithium batteries have all the ingredients to self sustain a fire. I'm surprised that you didn't know that, considering the amount of videos and reports of car fires. For example a Tesla fire in Germany couldn't be extinguished, the fire fighters called for a portable swimming pool on the back of a low loader because nothing else was big enough to submerge the car. Another in the USA was extinguished at the cost of 30,000 gallons of water, and it re ignited 4 days later. Nowadays the firefighters just leave them to burn.
Personally speaking, if I were a manufacturer of EVs I would be developing aluminium air batteries. An EV running on one of these can achieve a range of 1500 miles. Problem is, aluminium air batteries are not rechargeable because the cathode gets eaten away. However the electrode can be replaced but this is considered to be too expensive. I think it could be made to work, if a battery recycling/exchange infrastructure could be set up which would mean calling into a battery centre and swapping the battery out instead of recharging. It would take minutes rather than hours and work on a 'service exchange' principle. The military have been using these batteries for quite a few years.JH: I want a nuclear fusion car … what a way to go out.
"t doesn't matter whether the lithium is elemental or not, lithium is lithium at the end of the day"
That won't do. Would you, discussing table salt, say "it doesn't matter whether the sodium is elemental or not, sodium is sodium"?
"I'm surprised that you didn't know that". I did know that. I was making the point explicit because you had earlier said "It reacts violently when exposed to the atmosphere" whereas that's irrelevant if the battery contains its own oxidant.
As the chap said "It is these organic solvents which are the leading fire hazard in Li-ion batteries". It flows that the lithium isn't the leading fire hazard. Unsurprisingly since it is not present in its elemental state. Just as sodium isn't present in salt in its elemental state which explains why salt isn't a fire hazard.
JH: I’ll not compile the post this evening … firstly knackered, secondly there might be more on the topic. Looking at about 0630 tomorrow at OoL.
JH: Woke up at 2 a.m., no bad thing for me, better get that post collated and scheduled at OoL now, otherwise I just know I'll sleep through the 0630 promise. Just going to run the conversation as is in chronological order, unembellished ... important discussion, I feel definitive.
DM, a well thought out, sensible argument which I have to concede. As I said I'm no chemist so in no position to argue the fact anyway but your point on salt/sodium has made me rethink my own logic. For me only one question remains, which is why a L-ion battery would burst into flames simply by the case being opened. I can't go with the thermal runaway argument if there's nothing to cause it. There's a chap on YT who opens e-cig batteries (carefully) and he's had a few that have exploded in his hand.
A fully charged car battery contains a lot of energy. In the case of a fully electric car that energy must be equivalent to the amount of hydrocarbon fuel required to drive the car (remember the battery adds about an extra 50% to total weight) the 200 miles claimed. For long duration storage / transport lithium batteries will have about 50% of maximum charge.
ReplyDeleteIf anything short circuits any cell, which has near zero electrical resistance, within the battery that stored energy is converted immediately to heat. After that all the cells around it will short. There can be up to over 2000 cells.
The chemical combustion of the battery components as well as the rest of the car only adds to the fun. Aluminium alloy burns well once you get it hot enough. And sexy carbon fibre is just expensive coal.
As we can see in that fire on the high seas...
DeleteThank you all, JH, DM and Ripper for this composite (yet precise) statement of facts that the 'greenies' would rather we did not have! - hence the complete lack of such material in the MSM.
ReplyDeleteIt remains for their 'windmills' to be similarly exposed (as if there hasn't been sufficient evidence already) and coal generation restored (where the bstds didn't completely destroy the sites to prevent such happening)
Demolishing old coal power stations may turn out to be a good thing. There will be nice brownfield sites near population centres and with good grid connectivity. Modern coal plants (super-hyper-ultra-critical, or something) are far more efficient and must be cheaper to run. We could buy one from the Chinese, reverse engineer it and build our own copies. Yes We Can Build Back Better. (Sorry!)
ReplyDeleteWhatever the dangers of lithium, and there clearly are many, these dangers are magnified hugely by the pretence necessary to even begin to claim parity with real cars convenience wise.
ReplyDeleteForget for a moment the sheer impracticality and impossibility of the needed number of "fast" chargers to be equivalent to the current (no pun intended) network of filling stations.
Think of what a "fast" charger is doing.
It is deliberately abusing the battery by forcing as much current/voltage (hundreds of amps/volts) into it as it can get away with. This is not how batteries should be treated, particularly when they are hundreds of small cells packed together.
Entertaining as they are, these constant milk float fires, there is inevitably going to occur something very unpleasant involving hideous burns to multiple victims in a very public place.
Then somebody will have to take the blame.
And we all know who that WON'T be...
Delete