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Rethinking Lithium Batteries

David Baillie

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posted 2 years ago

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Judy Heald wrote:Definitely wished I hadn't clicked on this thread while sitting in my caravan with my 4 little ones and with 4 new lithium batteries for our solar system. I'd feel more comfortable about it if I was in a house and could fire insulate the room they were in.
I have to now work double hard to shift my frequency away from fire fear.

As mentioned above lithium iron type chemistries are safer then other lithiumchemistries. Use a good quality mppt charge controller no pwm types for solar. In a van I would suggest a victron to act as the go between between alternator and battery do not use an old fashion isolator to send the power to it directly from the alternator. Make sure your battery bank has a built in hi temp cut out. Install a smoke detector. Do not. Do not charge to 100 percent if possible.

Mike Kay

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posted 2 years ago

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No mention of the elephant in the room of what the ethical cost is to rechargeable batteries using cobalt

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/npr/2023/02/01/1152893248/how-modern-day-slavery-in-the-congo-powers-the-rechargeable-battery-economy/

David Baillie

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posted 2 years ago

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Mike Kay wrote:No mention of the elephant in the room of what the ethical cost is to rechargeable batteries using cobalt

https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/npr/2023/02/01/1152893248/how-modern-day-slavery-in-the-congo-powers-the-rechargeable-battery-economy/

lithium iron are not using cobalt as far as I know.

Luke Bryan

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posted 2 years ago

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David Baillie wrote:

Mike Kay wrote:No mention of the elephant in the room of what the ethical cost is to rechargeable batteries using cobalt

What about the fact they got much better in recent years - reducing the amount of Cobalt and other conflict minerals in recent years' EV batteries?
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/09/22/everything-you-need-to-know-about-teslas-new-4680-battery-cell/

John Weiland

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posted 1 week ago

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I hope this is an appropriate thread for this cautionary entry. As I'm in the middle of testing a small 12V LiFePO4 battery DIY build, I've been immersed in many web-pages and videos on the battery chemistry and technology. The video linked below came across my viewing and details the explosion of an LiFePO4 home battery bank, at this point determined to likely be due to hydrogen gas liberated from a few malfunctioning cells. Apparently, the room housing the batteries accumulated sufficient gas to ignite and cause the explosion. The video author provides numerous references regarding the incident and offers, as a fire safety engineer, some thoughts on how to safeguard rooms that may hold large battery banks. As I am finishing up a small 12V 100Ah battery construction and had not seen much on venting the box, I was wondering what others may think of safety precautions regarding LiFePO4 batteries and their location on the homestead. Comments encouraged about how those engaged in DIY LiFePO4 battery construction and installation are addressing these potential dangers. Thanks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWx7AFKJYHA

“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”― Albert Einstein

Allen Jackson

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posted 1 week ago

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John Weiland wrote:I hope this is an appropriate thread for this cautionary entry. As I'm in the middle of testing a small 12V LiFePO4 battery DIY build, I've been immersed in many web-pages and videos on the battery chemistry and technology. The video linked below came across my viewing and details the explosion of an LiFePO4 home battery bank, at this point determined to likely be due to hydrogen gas liberated from a few malfunctioning cells. Apparently, the room housing the batteries accumulated sufficient gas to ignite and cause the explosion. The video author provides numerous references regarding the incident and offers, as a fire safety engineer, some thoughts on how to safeguard rooms that may hold large battery banks. As I am finishing up a small 12V 100Ah battery construction and had not seen much on venting the box, I was wondering what others may think of safety precautions regarding LiFePO4 batteries and their location on the homestead. Comments encouraged about how those engaged in DIY LiFePO4 battery construction and installation are addressing these potential dangers. Thanks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWx7AFKJYHA

For starters, don't hermetically seal up any battery energy storage devices? Much like radon remediation, ventilation will prevent problems, and in the case of LiFePO4 batteries, they don't even need much ventilation, just don't seal them off in a special room and keep them under 60 degrees C(140 degrees F)... For that explosion, someone paid extra to build a pressure cooker for their batteries, and it worked!

Hydrogen is notoriously hard to contain because of its molecular size (it's got the smallest molecules of all the elements), AND it's very low density means it will rise up, so provided you have adequate/normal air flow and NOT a perfectly airtight space, it will find its way out and float away long before it can accumulate to dangerous levels.

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Allen Jackson

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posted 1 week ago

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As I watched that video (the follow up one), a few things stood out to me.

The presenter doesn't claim to be a battery expert, and he isn't. He's a battery "failure" expert & I don't dispute that at all.

He mentioned these batteries were "expensive", but that doesn't necessarily make them "good quality". I fully agree that those are some pretty expensive batteries, and at least the recent models are UL 9450 rated. I'm not sure UL 9540 has been around long enough for the specific ones in the video to have been so rated, and I couldn't tell which listings were on the label shown, but it's clear that part of the "expensive" is the manufacturer spending the money to have their products tested extensively.

Personally, I question some of the design choices for that battery design, as it was a 16S26P battery... That means it's 26 banks in parallel of 16 strings of smaller cells in series, which equals 416 chances for cell failure... While I can't know for sure, trying to reverse engineer a design from the shots in the video with commonly available components, the only reason I can imagine wanting to use the smaller metal can cells, is that they usually have a higher "C" rating, like 5C or even 10C (although one ends up needing to massively parallel banks of them to achieve any significant Ah capacity). The higher complexity & higher parts count definitely means a higher cost of manufacturing, ergo also more expensive... I'm not sure the tradeoff is bringing much value to the product because battery energy storage systems aren't normally required to produce or absorb relatively higher peak currents (The "C" rating doesn't have to be higher than 1)

https://discoverbattery.com/products/search/42-48-6650

The higher the "C" rating, the faster a cell can charge & discharge, but the more prone they're likely to be able to achieve thermal runaway. However, this is still a distraction, because UL 9540 compliance doesn't mean that a battery can't achieve thermal runaway, or fail in that way, it just means that a compliant system won't induce the same failure in the adjacent battery system if/when it does. And it appears to have been successful - the adjacent batteries didn't look like they experienced an induced thermal runaway, for what that's worth... But the patient still died.

There was a "perfect storm" required to create this disaster, and only part of it is due to a battery system failure. I gather that the owner didn't skimp on any aspect of this, and the contractor who built the building took great pride in their work (for good reason), but neither of them understood that LiFePO4 batteries don't need a sealed and climate-controlled environment, held at a constant 25 degrees C, they just need to be above freezing to charge, above -20 C (-30 for some of the larger cells) to discharge, and below 60 C to keep from overheating. The 2x6 construction wasn't to make the building more sturdy, it was to allow more space in the walls for insulation! In Riverside, CA, they would have been better served by an automatic greenhouse fan that came on above 35 C or so - it rarely gets below freezing in that area, but can be warm in the summer.

I don't believe most of us are likely to be willing to spend the resources needed to recreate such a disaster?

Christine Keller

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posted 5 days ago

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I stuck with LiFePO4 mostly because it buys me some peace of mind, but I still treat the setup like it could throw a tantrum any day. A decent BMS, fuses that match the gear, and a spot with airflow made a big difference for me. I keep the whole pack in a shed so if anything cooks itself, it stays outside.

Coydon Wallham

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posted 3 days ago

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John Weiland wrote:I hope this is an appropriate thread for this cautionary entry. As I'm in the middle of testing a small 12V LiFePO4 battery DIY build, I've been immersed in many web-pages and videos on the battery chemistry and technology. The video linked below came across my viewing and details the explosion of an LiFePO4 home battery bank, at this point determined to likely be due to hydrogen gas liberated from a few malfunctioning cells. Apparently, the room housing the batteries accumulated sufficient gas to ignite and cause the explosion. The video author provides numerous references regarding the incident and offers, as a fire safety engineer, some thoughts on how to safeguard rooms that may hold large battery banks. As I am finishing up a small 12V 100Ah battery construction and had not seen much on venting the box, I was wondering what others may think of safety precautions regarding LiFePO4 batteries and their location on the homestead. Comments encouraged about how those engaged in DIY LiFePO4 battery construction and installation are addressing these potential dangers.

For DIY batteries/solar, I would not chance the random misinformation from Utube University, not when there is the DIY Solar forum full of knowledgeable people who check each other while engaging in conversational discussion over the topics. I've seen a few threads where the veterans there roll their eyes at that StacheD dude as he tends to embellish 'facts' in his reporting of incidents to sensationalize them and do the clickbait thing for his channel.

I had my 8S1P 280Ah LFP battery in a box I made from 1" pine lumber originally in a shed under my panel array. I moved it into my yurt for winter and it stayed there for the next year. Then I had my root cellar done enough to place them where the temperatures will remain steady, and am engineering some ducts with computer fans drawing through mass to keep moisture down without losing the temperature moderation, which will in turn prevent any gas build up in the unlikely event of a critical failure.

Given the number of DIY batteries done with LFP cells that have been rejected from the auto industry and relatively few incidents reported, catastrophic failure is not on my personal radar. I did however find one of my cells leaking when I opened the shipping container. I didn't know what to do with the cell after a replacement was sent, so left it sitting just inside my yurt door.

Eventually, after hours and hours of scouring the internet for danger/disposal info about the electrolyte in LFPs, I confirmed that leaking fluid mixed with water would give off a form of chlorine gas. I had already noticed some symptoms and connected them to snow being tracked in and mixing with the leaky battery before moving it outside. But it is alarming to me how almost no information existed in the consumer sphere about a plain and clear danger like that, while the media was being flooded about sensationalized Lithium explosions that seem extremely rare and more adjacent to LFPs than caused by them...

Become extra-civilized!

John Weiland

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posted 2 days ago

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Just going to drop this video link here which was released today by Will Prowse. It seems to be a good discussion related to these issues of gas or explosion dangers in LiFePO4 batteries. My suspicion is that this is a vulnerability with many possible solutions....as it's early days in the mass production of the technology, those fixes are absent from a lot of the currently-deployed banks of LiFePO4 batteries out there, but safe location and arrangement of the batteries can mitigate much of the concern over severe accidents. Also, it does look as if fire extinguishers for lithium based batteries now are available from many sources. This has been a very useful thread for me....Thanks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvZlTMgEU6s

“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”― Albert Einstein

Coydon Wallham

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posted 23 hours ago

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I'm surprised Will takes such a supportive stance in relation to alarmist attitudes on the subject. I think this post expresses what the forum veterans see in the situation more generally.

I've noticed Will seems under a great deal of pressure to control content on the site and skew it in a direction promoted by outside influencers. I've seen something similar here with Paul and pressure over videos he's posted on Youtube, things like chainsaw safety. However, while logging related activities are statistically one of the most dangerous activities 'normal' people engage in, the numbers Will is talking about with LFP fire/explosions are absurdly tiny. If the standards of safety being suggested here were applied to the world of medicine, no one would ever take a pharmaceutical again. I think any discussion of "safety" and "risk" is distractive unless the relative proportions of probability are made clear...

Become extra-civilized!

John Weiland

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posted 23 hours ago

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Coydon Wallham wrote:.......the numbers Will is talking about with LFP fire/explosions are absurdly tiny. If the standards of safety being suggested here were applied to the world of medicine, no one would ever take a pharmaceutical again. I think any discussion of "safety" and "risk" is distractive unless the relative proportions of probability are made clear...

I have an acquaintance who did some quality control in the pharma industry and tend to agree with this statement. What I see with LFP technology.....and again, what I "see", not what is statistically supported......is that it is relatively early days and the numbers and various situations of deployment of LFP have not accumulated enough to be sure of safety/danger. Personally, I'm more than willing to balance risk and reward frequently on the farmstead....disabling safety features on my tractors or equipment that I just feel are silly or annoying. I thought Will did.....well.....an okay job with his cautions, but agree that with more time, the dangers, precautions, and solutions allowing for widespread acceptance of LFP by consumers world-wide will come to pass. Let's not forget that there will be those wanting to see the technology fail for myriad reasons. At this point, and respecting the precautions now emerging for home-bank battery installation, I'm certainly willing to transition what amount of my property away from grid power I can and towards homestead localized power where possible.....and LFP seems like a decent choice for that.

“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”― Albert Einstein

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