Lithium battery explosion at GM lab

Re: Explosion at GM battery lab

OK AG closed chamber to keep H2 in? Any time you have an enclosed explosive mixture of flammable gas and air, if that ignites, you get an extremely powerful type of explosion known as a detonation (shock waves, etc). It is not clear to me the JCI closed chamber was any safer unless it was large enough to dilute any H2 vapors that came out? (to keep them below the exposive limit) Normally in a lab, room ventilation or equipment such as ventilated hood is used to let any released gases get away.

Anyways sounds like I would have liked to have seen the experiments at JCI too.

 

Re: Explosion at GM battery lab

When your a kid its fun to see adults blow things up. The safety factor comes in designing the chamber so that the explosion, or gassing, or leaks stays contained inside a safe area. I have no idea what the gm chambers looked like, but it sounds like they could make the batteries hot or cold, but it did not contain the fire or battery gasses or material.

http://www.freep.com/article/201204...-injured-in-blast-at-GM-Tech-Center-in-Warren

 

Re: Explosion at GM battery lab

they were probably testing what they thought were safe batteries, ie probably due to poor prior testing from A123.

once again, my theory about designing what you are advertising as your main products are startup supplier technology comes into play

 

I don't think it is the battery's fault. The gases escaped the battery safely. After the explosion, the battery was still in tact.

It sounds like the explosion was caused by those gases trapped in the containment chamber. Perhaps they need ventilation.

 

Re: Explosion at GM battery lab

It could be that the containment chamber was poorly designed.
It could have been improperly sealed.
It could have been opened too soon after the test.

I can make wild guesses too.

I take it you have a special-edition Prius that only contains parts designed by Toyota.

PS A123 is not a startup.

 

I do not know...what is the installed base of lithium ion v. NiMH?

All I know is that I had already decided that I'll be sticking with the more tried-and-true NiMH-based hybrids and let more pioneering souls field test the LIONs. I know that the LION car batteries are a far cry from those hot LION cell phone and laptop batteries, but I still prefer to sit out early field experiences.

The Prius plug-in is the only Prius model that does not use a NiMH traction battery, correct?

 

Incorrect. The Prius Plugin will have a Li-Ion battery. Toyota has put in Li-Ion Batteries in their Prius + in Europe, which is how they fit in the 3rd row seats in the Prius + (It's basically the Prius v)

If you go here:

Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You will see this:

Part of the reason we don't see many Li-Ion batteries in the current model cars is the cost of the battery pack ups the price of the cars by a significant amount.

 

What it does strongly suggest is that GM doesn't know what the hell it is doing in Li ion battery development. That does directly impact the Volt and any future hybrid/electric vehicles they produce.

 

That's what I said. The Prius plug-in is the only Prius (sorry--U.S.-centric here) that does NOT have the NiMH. So the plug-in is LION and all other Prius sold in the U.S. are NiMH.

I can hardly keep track of the configurations of the U.S. Prius models (though I do it much better than 95% of the American Toyota sales reps I've met so far).

 

The point though was that Li-Ion batteries were used by Toyota. The Tesla also uses a Li-Ion battery pack and their only mistake was how it was first designed that you can brick the car if you don't make sure to keep it reasonably charged (IE: don't ever let the battery drain completely by not charging it at least once in a while or drain the pack to depletion) and it is also in the Fisker Karma car as well, which only had the A123 company making a mistake in manufacturing that caused some problems which they are owning up to.

The only other time Li-Ion batteries have been a serious problem was back when Sony made a serious mistake that lit up, literally, a few laptops.

The technology is within reason, the real problem is just the actual 'impact' which would be the surest way to compromise a li-ion battery pack, which is easy to do with a car.

 

...and there has never been a fire or an explosion from gasoline engine research?

 

Yep, PiP and 7 seater Prius+/alpha has li-ion.

Off the top of my head, '12 HCH, KOH, HSH, Malibu Eco (eAssist) and '12 Buick Lacrosse eAssist all use li-ion. There are probably a few more. '13 FFH will too. But, look at the sales volumes at March 2012 Dashboard | Hybrid Cars vs Prius and think of the installed base.

 

Part of the point of these chambers is to collect the gasses and see if they are formed at a safe level. The problem seems to be chamber design or safety procedures. I don't think GM will provide details, but OSHA may if it was procedures. The batteries were not at risk of fire in normal circumstances, but this is a fail for making the chemistry unchanged in a production vehicle. We don't even know if this was a proposed spark battery or something else.

All the mercedes, bmw, vw, porsche designs have lithium chemistries also.
There were a lot more buggy whips than cars at one point in time, but we don't see many today. I would assume this is the last generation of nimh batteries, as prices are assumed to drop on li chemistries to be bellow nimh in the near future.

They have been blowing up batteries for a long time in test chambers. Nothing to see here other than the chamber did not contain the gasses well enough. These new batteries are much more powerfull, but don't need to be more dangerous.

 

Government Motors strikes again!!!!

 

lithium ion batteries have many different types. LiPo is far more dangerous than the LiFePo4 that are used in aftermarket plugin conversion kits but it doesn't have the energy density like the LiPo.

 

On YouTube there are some videos of blowing up small Li batts in test chambers. Reading between the lines of GM statement, it just sounds to me like these test chambers are not air-freed with nitrogen before the tests, and so the gases can potentially build up to explosive limits if the battery size/gas releases are big enough compared to the test chamber size.

 

obama cars?'

 

GM Lithium battery explosion update.

 

Yeah... some people have (incorrectly) given the Volt the label of Obamacar since we already have Obamacare.

I suppose these future vehicles can be called Obamacars.

 

Just read in John Peterson's AltEnergy blog that perhaps H2S was the gas that evolved from the battery under the test. Presumably the test batt had some sulfur containing constituents. I thought Peterson over stated danger of H2S but it is bad stuff of course. Don't think anyone is suggesting current Li batts release H2S perhaps just the test batt. We could sensationalize H2S but of course I think human body emits some also.