My Project Lithium Battery Caught Fire

By anyone who is not blind, delusional, biased, senile or has had one too many glasses of hateraid ol chap.

 

"YOu DOn'T knOw whO I Am, BUT bUY tHeSE DoZEn eXpeNsIVe dOODADS to Get INcreASed MPg. USE my LInk tO SAve sOme CASh."
"Okay, I bought one and it caught on fire."
"LIAR!!! Tell Us WHo YoU aRE!!!"

 

See my proposed action plan in post #223 in your Signal Soother Test thread.

 

@Mr. F

Follow the troll train the link to my thread where I told old chapman who I have met from the forum.

Otherwise Im not sure what kind of personal info you want to know about me or why it matters to you.

Honestly it seems like you have mental issues typing like a keyboard warrior who would never meet anyone in the first place.

 

Seriously people, get a life. My NiMh battery caught fire FFS, I posted photos of it sometime back on this forum, yet I still had some members posting it was false
I have tortured a lot of LFP cells when I was initially designing our BMS and battery systems for off grid house batteries, and they simply do not catch fire .... they vent their more volatile parts of their electrolyte, it might look like smoke, but it is actually a dense cloud of vapour that settles very quickly, but they can't actually catch fire, they do not generate their own oxygen, so any fire would require oxygen from the air outside the cell casing and something to ignite it.

It requires cobalt in the chemical make up to generate oxygen inside the cell when over heated, then you have all the requirements for a battery fire, LFP, LYP and lithium titanate do not contain cobalt, Sodium ion doesn't contain cobalt either, so no chance they will catch fire either.

Sodium ion is a cell chemistry still developing and has been over 3 to 4 yrs, there are over 700 different combinations of anode, cathode, electrolyte mixes and more still in the lab.

Even though popular social media experts seem to consider the electrolyte is salt water, that was abandoned in the very early testing, the water breaks down and shortens the cycle life, the non active plate (anode and cathode relate to the direction of electron flow, charging or discharging) is not graphite, hard carbon and graphene are popular at the moment, but CATL is already on its second commercial version, so it's way too early to say what the ultimate combination will be .... but you can bet it will come out of China ... they are just so far ahead of the game in battery technology now the rest of the world would be some what foolish to even attempt to play catch up ......
Will sodium ion be the chemistry type to replace lithium ion ..... who knows, it will be the one that can charge the fastest, discharge at a consistent current rate from 100% SOC to 5% SOC without serious degradation of capacity or internal resistance over 10,000 cycles (that equates to 3 cycles from 100% to 5% every day for 10 yrs) yet remain cost effective .... sodium ion is up there with the best of them at the moment ......

T1 Terry

 

@T1 Terry
You sound like an intelligent person, which is refreshing. Thank you for taking the time to respond to my accusations.
Looking forward to continuing this conversation with another rationale adult.

A key difference is that you designed a BMS into your LFP system, whereas NexPower did not design a BMS into their LFP packs. So then all it takes is one cell overcharging and then it's game over. They added insult to injury by later creating the "Signal Soother", which masks cell failures to the one remaining OEM component that might otherwise detect said failure.

Would your company allow you to sell an LFP product that only monitors stack voltage every ten cells (e.g. 1-, 10+, 20+, 30+, etc)? Do you agree that is a recipe for disaster?

Please search youtube for several counterexamples. While fires are less common with LFP cells, they can and do happen, both directly & indirectly (e.g. due to heat spread into nearby combustibles). I have a few addenda below.

Yes, you have described the most common LFP failure mode. However, while LFP batteries are vastly less fire-prone than other lithium chemistries (e.g. NMC), they're not completely immune to fire.

I agree. Specifically, LiCoO2 is the primary catalyst for self-sustained oxygen generation in 'standard' lithium cells. The same precursor also decomposes into carbon monoxide and lithium oxide (the white crystalline solid that gets deposited on nearby surfaces during thermal runaway).

However, I must clarify that while LFP cells aren't self-sustaining during a fire, they are still capable of burning (i.e. producing flames during a thermal event). Yes, non-LFP lithium is more likely to run away, but the fact remains that LFP cells can burn if not properly monitored. Please consult your references online for numerous examples.

Taking a step back, do we really expect customers to care whether or not flames are emitted during an LFP thermal event? Either way they're going to have a bad experience, which is easily preventable by adding a BMS. Obviously having the car 'only' fill with smoke is a better outcome than also having it also burn to the ground... but are we really ok with a product that doesn't make even a passing attempt at preventing the thermal event from occurring?

Whether or not the cells sustain fire during a thermal event, engineering best practices require LFP systems to have a properly designed BMS system. That's why you designed a BMS for your system, right? The fact is NexPower chose not to add a BMS to their LFP products, which is unsafe because it leads to thermal events (whether or not there are flames).

I agree, and will reiterate that only a few sodium chemistries will ultimately 'win' in the long run... time will tell who picked the right horse. Five years from now we'll likely have a similar conversation regarding the "NMC vs "MnO" debate ten years ago.

Yes, I agree, and time will tell. Two additional deliverable are volumetric & gravimetric energy density... sodium has a long way to go there... if it can catch up, it will leave lithium in the dust.