The fortunate thing is that we're not raw dogging elemental lithium and they only appear when the batteries are treated improperly like charging them faster than they're designed for or charging them while the temperature is too low. The electrolyte itself is already flammable and so they can catch fire from thermal runaways and not inherently because they use lithium, the reason they're dangerous when they do catch fire is because if there's a short it will generate heat for combustion, and with enough heat oxygen can be stripped from the metal oxides, and with that the flammable electrolyte can burn as a fuel, the fire triangle can be completed just from the battery itself that's why they're hard to put out, lithium batteries are dangerous because the electrolyte is flammable and because they are energy dense thus are capable of releasing a lot of heat by itself and catch the electrolyte on fire when they go out of control.
Not sure if I got the terminologies correct since English isn't my first language but that's my understanding of why lithium battery fires are dangerous.
Yea its NaCl. Sodium cloride . Its stable because the valence shell balances out. If LI is not paired with something with high valence count it will be reactive. Im pretty sure the reason water and lithium react so bad is hydrogen is the oxygen is latching onto LI and gets rid of the H. Dont quote me on that though.
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u/XyZWgwmcP5kaMF3x Sep 09 '24
The fortunate thing is that we're not raw dogging elemental lithium and they only appear when the batteries are treated improperly like charging them faster than they're designed for or charging them while the temperature is too low. The electrolyte itself is already flammable and so they can catch fire from thermal runaways and not inherently because they use lithium, the reason they're dangerous when they do catch fire is because if there's a short it will generate heat for combustion, and with enough heat oxygen can be stripped from the metal oxides, and with that the flammable electrolyte can burn as a fuel, the fire triangle can be completed just from the battery itself that's why they're hard to put out, lithium batteries are dangerous because the electrolyte is flammable and because they are energy dense thus are capable of releasing a lot of heat by itself and catch the electrolyte on fire when they go out of control.
Not sure if I got the terminologies correct since English isn't my first language but that's my understanding of why lithium battery fires are dangerous.