There is very little elemental Lithium in a Lithium-ion battery. It's not the Lithium that is burning, it's the electrolyte.
Poke a hole in any cell phone battery or EV battery and there's fire. That's all I'm getting at. Yes, there's fire resistant li-ion batteries, but they have notably lower energy density, so they haven't been the priority in phones, laptops, or BEVs. I suspect we're within a decade or two of a high capacity, low cost, low reactivity battery for all those applications, but even just recently a PG&E battery storage facility had a spontaneous fire. That's with a grid-tie facility too, so issues like size and weight don't apply.
I was just taking umbrage at your use of the word "lithium" (an element on the periodic table) to inaccurately describe a type of battery that is made up of a complex cocktail of multiple components.
OK, but you do the same to an older NiCad or NIMH battery or even a lead acid battery and you might get sparks and a puff of smoke, maybe even a pop from the hydrogen in the lead acid battery, but then it's over. Li-ion is the one that's still being worked on to make them less combusty. Lots of things will spark when shorted, it's li-ion in specific (and yes, not every variety, but the variety used in phones and BEVs) that spark but then also combust when punctured. I'm a big fan of EVs, but we're still in the early days.
Why do you people always think that nobody notices when you pull that "careful wording" crap?
And a bucket of gasoline will go up in flames if you drop a match in it. The reason Li-ion is used for EVs and not NiCad, Lead-Acid or NiMH is that it has a higher energy density. The challenge with any energy storage device is that if treated wrong, it can release that energy in a violent manner. Sure Li-ion batteries can fail catastrophically but that is either the result of a manufacturing defect or external damage like you said.
Actually, it usually won’t. The match will just go out. You have to hold the match OVER the gasoline to light the fumes.
You must be exhausted from jumping to all of those conclusions.
Nu-uh.
This isn't entirely true. There isn't supposed to be any, but it is possible to plate out elemental lithium into a Li+ battery. I've done it. It's a sneaky bastard that gets you later on when you least expect it.
I knew 5 minutes after I posted that I would get called out on it!
I’m aware of all that. My point was, even though these batteries are referred to as “lithium”, that’s not the main ingredient. By weight there is far more copper and aluminum.
ah ha haaha
Yea this is exciting stuff for energy in general, but not really relevant to transportation.
It can be relevant if it lets you charge up a huge iron-air battery overnight when grid demand is low and then supply the spikes for DC Fast Charging stations during peak hours. The key would be if they are more robust than the 400 to 1000 cycles of Lithium Ion batteries if you're going to do it every day. After all, a full round trip charge/discharge every day with Li-ion would translate into only 1-3 years of service, or perhaps 5-8 years if you lop off the top and bottom of the Li-ion's capacity.
They're not at this level of maturity yet, but they could be a huge future component for supplying DC-FC stations with energy during the daytime peak that was harvested from the cheap overnight production. It's promising tech as part of the overall grid and infrastructure, especially for Level 4 charging, or whatever it will be called for OTR trucking chargers when that becomes mainstream.
That's what's up. Very promising tech. I would love something like this for my house.
