More problems with wet lithium ion batteries - Port of Miami fire

It's just interesting that lithium battery fires get so much attention when gasoline related deaths are WAY more common on a statistical basis. When you look at indirect causes of death related to fossil fuels the picture gets way worse still. To say nothing of existential threats.

I commented because I want to counterbalance any fear mongering that goes on related to the adoption of battery tech as a viable solution for transportation.

I'm all for realistically exploring the dangers that come along with batteries though. As you indicated, it's a whole different problem.

There are a number of battery technologies in the works that seem very promising in terms of safety.

I can only imagine where we would be if we had continued on the path of electric propulsion since the early days of electric cars. My vote is for even greater investment in R&D for battery tech, we are on the cusp of a true revolution in energy infrastructure and transportation.

 

@dustman , I doubt we'd be dramatically further along. The energy available from a chemical reaction is and has been known for a century. There's nothing to discover there. No Tony Stark new elements exist. So we look for higher energy density to extend the pathetic range, but higher energy density make the cells even more like solid rocket boosters than they already are. Better safety and reliability require lower energy density rather than higher. The chemistry of the best cells require cobalt which has a ghastly environmental and human cost. And all this assumes we are charging those poisonous bombs with low carbon sources, which statistically we probably aren't, since most energy production worldwide is still from fossil fuels.

 

Local air pollution causes millions of deaths every year. Every technology has some kind of human cost. I choose to focus on the overall human cost.

The overall efficiency is greater with battery powered vehicles, even considering the extra steps and battery manufacturing 'externalities', is significantly better. "Renewable" energy production is growing exponentially. Battery energy density is set to double in the near future. This is not "tony Stark" stuff, it is actually happening. Look at charts of energy density over time, especially over the last decade. It is clear that increased investment in battery tech and infrastructure has payed huge dividends.

I share the frustration with the greenwashing of all this stuff, it is not nearly as "green" as they say it is, but it is still better than the alternative, and is getting better by the year. Obviously, some types of transportation are going to be dependent on fossil fuel for some time, such as long range flights and long range ocean transport. But I believe even that is solvable, given the steady advance in technologies.

While the potential for chemical reaction has been known, specific chemistries and specific challenges associated with them were unknown, and that is specifically where the advances are being made, helped along by manufacturing and scaling.

The real roadblock in my view is solar efficiency. Everything else is on the right track.

This is all absolutely necessary anyways. Extracting fossil fuels is only going to continue to become more difficult, more inefficient, and destructive and there is not an unlimited supply. And climate change is real. Believe me, we have been setting new records in my city every year, every month practically, and this winter isn't even a winter. I mean I could have grown my tomatoes outside instead of in the greenhouse.

 

That depends on what you are calculating. The electricity coming out of the outlet has to be produced somehow. The true cost calculation is the cradle to grave. As it is now, the power grid is close to its maximum or overloaded. To convert to all electric is not possible without increasing the grid and the power plants. The same people that want all electric are the ones that don't want new power plants, hydroelectric dams or nuclear plants. Also, a new grid would need to be incorporated into populated areas where the usual position is "not through my back yard". Further, LiIon batteries are not easily recyclable. In fact, it costs more to recycle than the current selling price.

I think this comment is fearmongering. Can you provide a reputable source to back your claim? I am interested to know.

 

Electric motor power driven platforms are being developed based on little or no Rare Minerals and can adjust to a large variety of energy inputs. To be compared to highly vulnerable combustion based motor systems which require some kind of combustible fuel. Current IC fuels in particular have a large number of vulnerable processes required, starting with discovery, and involving transportation, complex processes in refineries, storage and delivery Etc. And accidental or deliberate fires are possible and have happened at every stage. NIMBY when demand for fossil fuel increases requires more digging for decreasing finite resources, replacement of decommissioned refineries or additional new refineries, huge storage tanks, etc.

Nobody knows how long the current lithium based system will last, as there are a wide variety of alternative Battery and fuel cell System choices being developed based on little or no Rare Minerals and not having the safety and other issues associated with lithium. Some weight saving battery systems using ambient oxygen from the air at the anode instead of heavier chemicals inside the battery case, are being explored. The fuel for recharging batteries can come from hydroelectric, solar, wind, nuclear, Etc, or even from conventional or non-conventional fuel sources. No batteries or combustion required when using a fuel cell, attractive when coupled with a much lower cost and more efficient Electric driven platform. An additional attractiveness of electric systems is that they are generally easily scalable from say, small backyard windmills / solar cells and small vehicles like e-bikes / e-kayaks, to much larger systems, or anywhere in between, as might be necessary. To be compared to the current fossil fuel/ combustion which are essentially impossible to independently generate economically at a small scale, (except maybe for non fossil fuel Moonshiners?). Just my humble thoughts, FWIW.

 

Lithium is not a rare mineral. I worked several years on battery research but have not kept up the last couple of years. Whose research are you talking about?

 

In defense of Miami one of my home ports... This city mostly runs on Nuclear Power I have lifted this directly from Chat Gippity:

"Miami consumes approximately 20,208 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year per household. In total, Miami's annual electricity consumption is around 17.3 gigawatt-hours (GWh).
Comparing this to the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station, which produces about 13,904 GWh annually, it's clear that the nuclear plant generates significantly more electricity than the city's total consumption."

As our corner of the United States is uninhabitable without Air Conditioning we take the clean and stable supply of energy very seriously. As to your battery comment youre 100% correct @DogCavalry higher energy density does make them more dangerous but everything in a plastic bathtub filled with gasoline/diesel/lithium batteries is dangerous. Halon suppression and Lots of Fire Extinguishers are the key and knowing how and when to use them.

 

I guess those of us running 8 Kilowatt Hour gasoline gensets that use 1.1 gallons per hour on a carburetor aren't operating economically at small scale? Nothing wrong with electric boats but to suggest that fossil fuels aren't economic is kind of silly.

 

Pure Lithium metal is so reactive that essentially doesn't exist in the Earth's crust, so that's 0%, it is ranked number 32 out of 78 most common elements in abundance where it exists as the chemically bonded mineral combined with other elements. In that mineral form, ranks number 32 in abundance. Large synchronous AC electric motors have been tweaked to the point where they are almost as efficient as rare earth magnet motors, so that's a way to cut environmental and dollar costs. Very few lithium compounds react with water, but only the compounded hydrides and the pure metal can produce hydrogen when mixed with water. When a lithium battery is dropped especially into salt water, a short circuit can occur which produces tremendous amounts of heat to the point of possibly a thermal Runaway as the organic part of the electrolyte and anode graphite parts are combusted. Neither pure lithium or lithium hydride are likely to be formed in a thermal Runaway, but some cathodes may have tiny amounts alloyed lithium metal or lithium hydroxide which might come into play with a thermal run away. That's the way I understand it anyway..

 

If the maximum rating of your gen set is 8 kilowatt hours, and the application is always drawing that 8 KW hours, sounds pretty impressive economically. But it might be like the grid which has a huge rating in gigawatt hours, yet much less of that gigawatt rating is used during off hours when people are asleep, means a lot of capacity is wasted since grid generators can't be idled?

My son's business uses gasoline Ford F-150 pickups which get about 25 miles per gallon with one gallon costing around $3. He also has an electric Ford 150 and $3 of electricity can get him a distance of 75 miles instead of 25 miles, when he charges at home and during non-peak periods. Also what happens to the price of gasoline when there's a Refinery fire, Arab embargo, trucker strike, strategic oil Reserve drawdown, pipeline sabotage, Etc assuming it's even available? In my area we've never had an extended complete blackout that lasted more than a couple of weeks for at least 70 years, and that includes several hurricanes.

 

That is a far cry from your claim that it takes rare minerals to make the batteries. In fact, they are not batteries in the true meaning of the word. They work closer to a capacitor in that ions move from one side to the other and attach themselves to the carbon. Carbon is modified in different ways to make it porous to increase the surface area. The pore size is critical. The wrong size will make the ions attach, but not detach to be able to discharge energy. The electrolyte is a complex mix in a solution (usually hydrocarbons) that is tailored to the temperature of operation. There are no Li Ion batteries that are efficient over the same range of temperature as a lead/acid battery.

Firstly, that makes charging when needed not always possible. Sencondly, the difference you claim is not taking into consideration that the electricity does not have road taxes attached. That is coming to an end with registration increasing in price for electric vehicles to make them pay their share of road maintenance.

 

Yes, and many people have done that calculation, and it was long ago that electric surpassed fossil fuel in total efficiency. The analysis' are freely available on the internet. The efficiency is getting better rapidly as more renewable energy infrastructure is being deployed, and this is happening at an exponential rate. Much of the power grid is already out of date and overloaded with just general increase in energy use, not even considering transportation. Upgrading capacity is a small increase in cost relative to other aspects of the physical infrastructure, and it will all be paid back through increased revenue based on increased demand. What I'm saying is that grid upgrades are required anyways.

I have no problem with increasing the number of nuclear power plants, the technology has matured quite a bit and is much safer and more efficient than in the past, and it is much less of an existential threat than fossil fuels. Hydroelectric and fossil fuel has significant direct ecological impact, and failing ecosystems are as much of an existential threat as anything else.

This is a solvable problem and is being actively worked on. It is really just a matter of investment.

I'll leave the research to you. The information is freely available from many reputable agencies.

I will say that many people don't really understand the threat of ecological damage because they don't understand ecology, and how we are utterly dependent on ecological services for our very survival, regardless of all this fancy technology, and that will continue to be the case for many decades, perhaps centuries. Recycling and driving a Prius will do very little, and people who think they are right with the world doing those things only are completely ignorant, it's almost more dangerous than the willful ignorance of others. Changes have to be made on a much larger scale. Long before actual resource scarcity becomes a significant threat to survival... societal breakdown and war over resources...

Dependence on fossil fuels is simply not sustainable, no matter what angle you look at it from. And we will need the oil for other things in the future anyways.

Here the way I look at it, we are releasing tens/hundreds of millions of years worth of stored carbon in just a couple centuries, that can't be good.

 

GPT really sucks at math...

 

By the time lithium supply becomes a real problem, I'm pretty sure we'll have moved beyond the need for it.

 

The laws of physics don't and will not ever allow an electric vehicle that isn't more expensive with a pitiful range compared to an ICE equipped vehicle. We can make incremental improvements. But cheaper, safer, and robust means less range, lower energy density. End of story.