Battery Fires

[Az.]

No what I am getting at is a sealed fire proof box any use for charging battery’s ?

No. You would be literally making a bomb. The more you try to contain gasses the bigger explosion you will get.

or would you need to vent say through an old chimney stack ?

So if it did catch fire any fire would be contained And any smoke could go out through an old chimney . Which would then also be an air flow vent

Smoke is toxic and flammable. Chimney won't remove all of it , but it is better than nothing.

 

[matthewslack]

Your approach is back to front, and in a commercial setting potentially unlawful.

Known risks must be sufficiently mitigated, and most of that is in designing out the chances of them occurring.

Instead of containing a risky procedure in a fire proof box, eliminate the risky procedure!

That might be to implement equipment that cannot produce the dangerous situation. In the example of charging an individual cell group, the charging equipment would need to incorporate as a minimum automatic disconnection to avoid exceeding safe voltage, and better if it also monitored temperature and current.

Or in a commercial setting, treat a severely depleted or unbalanced battery as dangerous scrap, and eliminate the procedure altogether. Where's the liability if such a 'recovered' battery goes on to cause a problem? I wouldn't want it.

A fireproof box as a secondary measure does no harm, but is no substitute for proper risk controls.

 

[Nealh]

The news story say's the bike was bought from an online market place (what ever that is) face book or Ebay so likely a used item ???
The bike as we know is a converted push bike .
The chances of a mismatched battery /charger comes to light in my mind as well as the user not being familiar with safe charging practices or matched component parts.

 

[StuartsProjects]

Where's the liability if such a battery goes on to cause a problem? I wouldn't want it.

I would not want such a battery either.

If the battery were 'recovered' by someone very experienced at recovering batteries, then maybe.

But how often do people, who are clearly beginners, go onto public Internet forums and get advice on how to recover a battery .............

 

[chris_n]

I would not want such a battery either.

If the battery were 'recovered' by someone very experienced at recovering batteries, then maybe.

But how often do people, who are clearly beginners, go onto public Internet forums and get advice on how to recover a battery .............

There is one on this very thread that does yet realise how close he came to a serious fire by bypassing the BMS (based on 'knowledge' gained here) and is now talking about a commercial venture repairing batteries. I warned him in another thread but he seems determined to either burn his house down or cause an explosion. This stuff is NOT a fire risk, it is an EXPLOSION risk and not to be treated lightly.
We currently have a drink driving campaign going on here which talks about 1000 times it was fine but the 1001st ended in disaster.

 

[guerney]

But how often do people, who are clearly beginners, go onto public Internet forums and get advice on how to recover a battery .............

There is one on this very thread that does yet realise how close he came to a serious fire by bypassing the BMS (based on 'knowledge' gained here) and is now talking about a commercial venture repairing batteries. I warned him in another thread but he seems determined to either burn his house down or cause an explosion. This stuff is NOT a fire risk, it is an EXPLOSION risk and not to be treated lightly.

We currently have a drink driving campaign going on here which talks about 1000 times it was fine but the 1001st ended in disaster.

Sorry 36 v

Damm just as I thought it was charging as it came up to fully charge I heard a small crack sound and now one cell group has gone down .

Black RS white Red LS yellow is now 0 volts

Advice is better than no advice. Personally, as a non-expert, that huge difference in cell bank voltage would have stopped me in my tracks. Excessive heat would probably have set off my alarm, before that hot cell/cell group cracked:


https://www.pedelecs.co.uk/forum/threads/home-ruination-by-ebike-battery-fire-expulserating-preterminator%E2%84%A2%C2%AE%C2%A9%E2%84%A0.46934/


Presumably he switched the charger off when he heard the crack, and had he not read forum threads and received advice, that "small crack sound" would have occurred while the battery pack was inside the case, probably gone unnoticed while the battery continued to charge, which might have gone on to damage adjacent cells starting a chain reaction, leading to more ignitable smoke and explosion? At least that dude still has nostril hairs, eyebrows, possibly a full head of hair, and a house they can all live in.

 

[guerney]

A couple of thermistors isn't going to cost much but I somehow doubt that is the route that will be followed / legislated.

As far as I can tell, there's a dearth of detail in the new guidelines, and I reckon this is because there wasn't much agreement between the vested interests involved, which I believe will lead to them doing whatever the heck they want with regard to locking everything down to hell and making ebikes unrepairable. Repairability isn't mentioned at all! Roll on fast e-fashion! Our food, air and water will be further poisoned by ewaste and the oceans will become gigantic extinction level event causing cesspools.

Statutory guidelines on lithium-ion battery safety for e-bikes

Guidance for businesses.

www.gov.uk

 

[StuartsProjects]

Advice is better than no advice.

For sure it is.

And most often the advice should be, you dont know enough about the subject, you cannot become an expert by reading a couple of internet posts, so dont even attempt the repair.

Yet still the 'advice' is given.

 

[StuartsProjects]

There is one on this very thread that does yet realise how close he came to a serious fire by bypassing the BMS (based on 'knowledge' gained here) and is now talking about a commercial venture repairing batteries.

Well asking advice is fine.

But you cannot redact the appropriate advice to a couple of sentences in an Internet post, yet some people try.

If you were buying a 'repaired' battery, most people might might expect that the person doing the repair had some formal qualifications or certifications in electrics\electronics.

 

[guerney]

For sure it is.

And most often the advice should be, you dont know enough about the subject, you cannot become an expert by reading a couple of internet posts, so dont even attempt the repair.

Yet still the 'advice' is given.

I have bought a job lot of Carrera bikes and parts from an online auction .

The risk is on a whole other scale vs a joblot of broken ICE dirt bikes to repair and resell. I reckon that battery pack would have been charged, overheated, smoked and exploded, if he hadn't received advice and opened the battery pack. Sadly, time can't yet be rewound to confirm. If time ever could be, we'd already know how.

BTW despite the ban, second hand ebikes and batteries are still being sold by individuals on ebay.

 

[saneagle]

There is one on this very thread that does yet realise how close he came to a serious fire by bypassing the BMS (based on 'knowledge' gained here)

He didn't do it based on knowledge gained here. He was told how to check the battery and how to balance it, but he chose to charge it through the output terminals, presumably because he read that somewhere else or just invented that procedure himself. Nobody advised him to do that, and, to my knowledge, nobody has ever advised anybody to do that on this forum without explaining the risks and how to mitigate them.

 

[chris_n]

He didn't do it based on knowledge gained here. He was told how to check the battery and how to balance it, but he chose to charge it through the output terminals, presumably because he read that somewhere else or just invented that procedure himself. Nobody advised him to do that, and, to my knowledge, nobody has ever advised anybody to do that on this forum without explaining the risks and how to mitigate them.

While he may not ha e been instructed to completely bypass the BMS to charge the whole bank he had been told to charge individual cell groups directly by bypassing the BMS. A couple of posts later he has got bored of waiting for the individual groups to charge so decided to do the rest all in one go. Some of the cell groups appear to have a higher voltage than others leading to the fortunately benign incident. If he continues buying piles of shite and not understanding what he is doing and not following the sometimes very technical advice given here to the letter somone is going to get badly hurt.

 

[guerney]

If you were buying a 'repaired' battery, most people might might expect that the person doing the repair had some formal qualifications or certifications in electrics\electronics.

My guess is, he knows more about balloons than I do, but not as much as @Nealh.

If he continues buying piles of shite and not understanding what he is doing and not following the sometimes very technical advice given here to the letter somone is going to get badly hurt.

I sometimes wonder how many have a go battery repair heroes don't post about how they burned their houses down and killed their families, out of fear of embarrassment and barrage of "I told you so"s. I can't wait for the first one.

 

[soundwave]

My guess is, he knows more about balloons than I do, but not as much as @Nealh.




I sometimes wonder how many have a go battery repair heroes don't post about how they burned their houses down and killed their families, out of fear of embarrassment and barrage of "I told you so"s. I can't wait for the first one.

they wont have any internet will they and be in prison for being a twat

 

[saneagle]

While he may not ha e been instructed to completely bypass the BMS to charge the whole bank he had been told to charge individual cell groups directly by bypassing the BMS. A couple of posts later he has got bored of waiting for the individual groups to charge so decided to do the rest all in one go. Some of the cell groups appear to have a higher voltage than others leading to the fortunately benign incident. If he continues buying piles of shite and not understanding what he is doing and not following the sometimes very technical advice given here to the letter somone is going to get badly hurt.

Somebody explained to him exactly how to balance individual cells and how to monitor them so that there would be no issues. There's nothing wrong with that. You can't blame whoever that was for the guy ignoring the advice and doing his own thing.

It's basically the same as somebody asking how to store their battery. They'd be advised to keep it in a cool stable situation, but instead, they put it in an oven and it blew up when somebody turned on the oven to pre-heat it for the Sunday roast. Your argument is that nobody should have advised him to store it in case he ignored the advice and did his own thing. Storing batteries is dangerous if you don't do it right, so is using one, and so is having one. Maybe we should advise everyone not to get an ebike because they're dangerous. In fact never mind owning an ebike, riding any bike is complicated and dangerous if you don't get it right, so keep away from them. Is that it?