Anorher lithium battery fire

[newbury]

I've got a lot of DeWalt 20V and Flexvolt rechargeable batteries for my DeWalt tools, probably about 150 to 200 amp hours worth. These range from a few 1ah to about 5 12ah.

I've read that it's to increase the life of the battery it is better to charge to 80% or 85% then let them rest or use them.
Does anyone know of a charger/maintainer that will charge them and shut off at about 85%?

 

[FPGT72]

If you want to see what a lithium battery fire looks like, watch Battlebots on discovery, some truly amazing battery abuse there!

True, but.....

The point I was trying to make here is these batteries can go poof for "no reason". In the battlebot thing, they are taking hits and damage. In a model airplane (hopefully) there are no big bumps to them.

Generally when a battery gets to end of life, what I will do is shoot the thing. You can't just toss them, or should not, toss them in the trash for them to get crushed in the trash truck, again damage to the cell.

When it is too wet for me to go down to my range at home, it really is setup on some very wet land, I will do the salt bath for them till they get no where....followed by the dead short. That way I know they are safe to dispose of.

 

[Williy]

This is what happens to all the so called good ev's
Now these are the first ev's and there's been a lot of
changes that have been made to improve them

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

willy

 

[ning]

Me too, so I looked them up.

https://www.justrite.com/storage-and-safety-cabinets/battery-cabinets

They ain't cheap!!!

I like the idea in general, and others' discussion of a concrete bunker to keep your charging station in - together with the collapsible sand-filled ceiling.
Maybe have the charging station be in a sump; dump water in so it's completely submerged rapidly. Yes, it'll continue to burn in the water and you'll get a lot of steam, nothing else is going to catch fire.

LiPo battery fires are ~2,000°C; melting point of steel ~1,500°C.
The charging safe should probably have some sort of an alarm on that thing because I don't know how long it's going to last.

 

[ning]

A couple months back we came close to a fire charging lead-acid batteries in a vehicle. Bad charger cooked em. Any time moving energy around there is a risk, lithiums just have more energy in them.

It's not just the energy density. As has been brought up in a number of threads such as this, the biggest problem with Lithium-Polymer/LiIon batteries is that once they catch fire, you literally can't put the fire out - you have to wait for it to burn itself out and all fire-fighting can do is manage the burn site so that as little else as possible catches fire.

In a way you can liken it to a nuclear meltdown. You just have to wait for it to go out on its own, you're not putting the fire out.

 

[RayIN]

In 2012 we were driving to AK with our dually and 5er trailer. I plugged the charger into my camera battery. Forgot about it, went to bed. about the middle of the night I was awoke by a gunshot. I immediately thought, unusual for Canada.
Got up, walked through the trailer and found the smoking battery laying on the kitchen floor, which thankfully was tile.
Then like a dump a__ picked up the battery and got 2nd degree burns on my fingers. By then smoke had triggered the smoke alarms. Not only did the alarms wake DW, it also woke the people in the RV beside us, which added embarrassment to the humiliation of nearly burning up my RV-and us.
As a consequence, Now I only charge lithium batteries when I'm present, which gives me a great excuse to putter around in the garage for a few hours.
BTW, I have a 50# bag of cheap kitty litter in the garage for soaking up spilled oil, i works as good smothering agent for fires too.

 

[bdhsfz6]

BTW, I have a 50# bag of cheap kitty litter in the garage for soaking up spilled oil, i works as good smothering agent for fires too.

It's difficult to smother a lithium battery fire since it generates it's own oxygen. The kitty litter might help contain the fire though.

As others have mentioned earlier in the thread, I use a twist timer and never charge unattended.

I go a step further with my large lithium e-bike batteries. I charge them on a dolly on the concrete floor of the garage under a smoke / CO2 detector. Should a fire start, I can open the garage door and push the dolly outside with a garden rake in less that a minute.

When not on charge, I store them in steel ammo cans.