So I’m looking out of my window here in sunny SoCal, and notice all the hills have started to brown again. For the unitiated, California is basically a big tinder box for most of the year. Like millions of acres of wildfires.
Besides PREVENTING FIRES BEING THE NUMBER ONE PRIORITY!!
(duh.)
What kind of fire suppressant system would I want to carry in my backpack while mountain boarding ?
I assume a small foam fire extinguisher will cut it?
Battery fires need more than just CO2 extinguishers right?
Maybe a fire blanket? Toss it on the board and wrap it up like a hot burrito. Not sure how to extinguish a lipo / li-ion fire tho. Someone smarter than me please enlighten me - I’m here to learn. Batteries scare the hell out of me and I keep my board close to an exit at all times, in case I need to get it out of my apartment ASAP in case something happens to it.
Hard to put out a self-ignition battery fire. Once the cells go into runaway mode your best option is to let it burn itself out. Wrap it in a fire blanket if possible, then get it away from anything flammable and cover it with sand or dirt. Any fire extinguisher will only put out the flames temporarily, it will catch on fire again until all the energy is dissipated.
If you’re okay with adding a few points to your mountain board, you can use steel or aluminum and bolt or weld them into your battery enclosure with a small hole in one side for venting the fire, the box will get hot enough to auto ignite the surrounding grass and stuff and your board will still be toast, but you can definitely control a wood fire easier than a lithium fire
This seems to make the most sense. I store my batteries in 50 cal boxes with the lids just leaned closed. If one goes up itll emit smoke and maybe some flames, but itll contain the fire
… which are really more for extinguishing the blaze that the lithium fire starts because you’re not going to extinguish that lithium fire until the reaction is over.
The fire spreads from cell to cell because of the heat if you can keep the cells cool with water from a hose then the cell that’s burning may not trigger the next cell and you can stop the chain reaction
um not everyone has a hose ready… also lithium reacts with water causing more heat. (so your kinda left with a weird situation… cause lithium still burns in water) also many people live in apartments
In the context of batteries this is a myth. While lithium metal will burn in water the batteries DO NOT contain lithium metal, only lithium ions suspended in a flammable electrolyte.
The only way to stop the fire is to take all the heat out but that is not possible unless you have a firehose amount of water.
Fire blankets seem like a good idea to contain the fire, sand is good too but too heavy too carry around.
If you have a 3D printer and a lot of time, in theory you can make a compression cell holder with springs in each cell tube and a mechanical or temperature lock on the cap, if the cell gets hot enough to melt a ‘fuse’ or you pull a lever, the caps would release and the cells would pop out the sides like flares
No, the tab on each cell wound have the nickel bend up to the bus lines so the it would deflect along a fold line. Lay out would be similar to using cell level fused PCBs
Not sure how to extinguish a lipo / li-ion fire tho. Someone smarter than me please enlighten me - I’m here to learn. Batteries scare the hell out of me and I keep my board close to an exit at all times, in case I need to get it out of my apartment ASAP in case something happens to it.