this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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It Took 36,000 Gallons Of Water To Extinguish A Burning Tesla (jalopnik.com)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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A new crash recently in Alabama, but a reminder to something that we all know. Burning Teslas are far more difficult to extinguish than any other car.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

My guess is an electromagnetic crane. This isn’t a good option either. Just use halon fire extinguishers.

That's not helpful.

A Li-ion fire is a runaway exothermic reaction. You need to cool the battery pack below the runaway thermal temperature. Using water to cool the battery-pack and keeping it cool for hours is the best known solution, for now.

If you "only" use a fire extinguisher, you choke out the fire's reaction, and then 5 minutes later the exothermic reaction just continues (the battery is still hot and self-reacting at this point). The reason why water works is that it finally and sustainably cools the battery below the runaway temperature, and keeps the damaged battery pack below that critical temperature.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You can't choke the reaction since it's self oxidizing. Cooling down the reaction is the only way to stop it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I appreciate the note about the reaction here. Chemistry was my weakest subject back in school. So I'm sure I'm getting lots of details wrong, lol.

But I've also watched what fire-departments are doing and read up on whitepapers / discussions on fire-department tactics. So while my chemical knowledge is probably terrible, I at least know what the fire-departments know and discuss.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yeah, I've been vaping for like 12 years now (including building my own devices) and have done a ton of research into battery safety and such, so I always try to correct misinformation on posts about battery fires.

I'm sorry you keep getting downvoted because people don't know what they're talking about.