From: bill.sloman@ieee.org
On 22/12/2025 3:28 am, john larkin wrote:
> On Sun, 21 Dec 2025 15:54:01 -0000 (UTC), antispam@fricas.org (Waldek
> Hebisch) wrote:
>
>> Phil Hobbs wrote:
>>> Liz Tuddenham wrote:
>>>> Bill Sloman wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 20/12/2025 10:02 pm, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
>>>>>> Bill Sloman wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 19/12/2025 6:49 am, Liz Tuddenham wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [...]
>>>>>>>> Warning the user isn't much good, the battery technology needs to be
>>>>>>>> fail-safe not impending-fail-evident to the user.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Fail safe would involve a big resistor into which you could start
>>>>>>> discharging the battery if you detected worrying warming. You'd have to
>>>>>>> design the system to cope with that, and it would make the designers
>>>>>>> job more difficult.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Let's do some sums:
>>>>>
>>>>> First show where you got your numbers from.
>>>>>
>>>>> I've snipped out that bit of bizarre speculation.
>>>>
>>>> In more detail: the delamination of the seperator occurs at 25 metres
>>>> per second but the thermal runaway reaches a peak of 600 mm/sec and then
>>>> falls to 80 mm/sec according to Franson, Pfaff et al. "Exploring thermal
>>>> runaway propagation in Li-ion batteries through high-speed X-ray imaging
>>>> and thermal analysis".
>>>>
>>>> For their experiment, they initiated the failure by penetration with a
>>>> nail, but the same propagation could equally well be started by failure
>>>> of a very small area of a separator. The nail penetration was near the
>>>> casing and this sometimes resulted in a hole melting in the casing and
>>>> relieving the excess internal pressure. A separator failure away from
>>>> the casing could well result in much higher pressures and greater
>>>> spreading of incandescent materials.
>>>>
>>>> They measured the propagation time between the initially-failed cell and
>>>> an adjacent cell to be about 4 minutes but various videos of lithium
>>>> battery fires show cells exploding at a faster rate than this, once the
>>>> fire has taken hold.
>>>>
>>>> If we take the 4-minute figure as a reasonable approximation, this is
>>>> the time in which a 70 kWh battery must be discharged to prevent a
>>>> failed cell from setting off the others. That is more than 1 megawatt
>>>> to be dissipated in something the size of a car.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> In reality, the problem is picking up the increased rate of
>>>>> self-discharge long before you get to the point where thermal runaway is
>>>>> likely - the battery has to get above 120C before this can get going.
>>>>
>>>> A typical cell holds around 80 Wh of energy but less than 1 watt could
>>>> easily heat a small area of separator to over 120C without the
>>>> temperature rise or the discharge current being detectable outside the
>>>> cell. if you think you know a way of reliably detecting the failure of
>>>> less than a square millimetre of separator in a battery containing 500g
>>>> of materials, including about half a square metre of separator, the car
>>>> industry would be glad to hear from you.
>>>>
>>>> If you don't know of such a system, your assertions that lithium
>>>> batteries are safe as long as the designer has done his (or her) job
>>>> properly, and they can be discharged before a failure become
>>>> catastrophic, are based on nothing more than wishful thinking.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> The battery capacity of cars, on average, is about 70 kWh. This means a
>>>>>> resistor capable of dissipating 70 kW continuously is needed to
>>>>>> discharge the battery in one hour.
>>>>>
>>>>> You'd dump the excess energy slowly into the motor, letting it rock the
>>>>> car rapidly back and forth by about a foot or so to generate a little
>>>>> extra air circulation. It would take a while to discharge the battery,
>>>>> but it would get it done.
>>>>>
>>>>> It would be a emergency solution - the driver would get told that the
>>>>> battery needed attention long before this would be justifiable, and in
>>>>> our brave new world the battery condition monitor would probably have
>>>>> it's own mobile phone to rat out the inattentive owner to the local fire
>>>>> service.
>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm sure cars with a red-hot bedstead of resistance wire on the roof
>>>>>> would soon catch on.
>>>>>
>>>>> Your enthusiasm for impractical solutions is noted.
>>>>
>>>> It is probably just as practical as having a car start rocking backwards
>>>> and forwards for hours on end to discharge the battery.
>>>>
>>>> An even better solution (in a Brave New World) would be to have it drive
>>>> itself to somewhere where it can't cause any harm, as quickly as
>>>> possible. Perhaps every Local Authority should have a designated place,
>>>> downwind of the town, where cars with faulty batteries could be
>>>> programmed to drive themselves and burn out in relative safety.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> Gee, maybe some small person could figure out a propulsion system where the
>>> oxidizer and fuel wouldn’t be in such intimate contact. Maybe it could
>>> even use air!
>>
>> Given trouble due to CO2 and movement to electricity, I wonder
>> why nobody is talking about electrolysis of CO2? Clearly there
>> are technical difficulties, starting from fact that in normal
>> conditions CO2 is a gas. But is it hopeless?
>
> It's easy to get rid of CO2: feed it to plants.
Not all that easy. There are greenhouses in the Netherlands where the
atmospheric CO2 level is kept high. The plants need to be well lit to
capture it by photosynthesis, as well as well watered and well
fertilised. It's not cheap, and the out of season produce you get needs
to sell at premium prices.
--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
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