Electric Vehicle Ownership: Costs, Environment, Climate, PoliticsBy David Herron |
Lithium is a soft, silver-white metal that belongs to the alkali metal group of chemical elements. Like all alkali metals, lithium is highly reactive and flammable. For this reason, it is typically stored in mineral oil. Because of its high reactivity, lithium never occurs free in nature, and instead, only appears in compounds, which are usually ionic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium
That is, because Lithium is so reactive it is always found bound into other compounds.
Lithium is present nearly everywhere but in low concentrations. It is most often commercially extracted via evaporation ponds on dry salt lake formations. Most lithium is produced in salar's in Chile and Bolivia.
For the purposes of this website we are solely interested in their use in batteries.
TODO TBD [[include types-of-lithium-batteries]]
The reports referenced below contain alarming stories of fires and explosions that occur with some sorts of lithium batteries. Obviously electric vehicles must have safe batteries and a lot of research is identifying lithium battery chemistries that are safe (do not explode).
Berkeley, CA-based startup Seeo, Inc. has developed a battery based on solid polymers. They are supposed to be safer, longer-lasting, lighter, and cheaper than current batteries. Many kinds of lithium-ion batteries use lithium cobalt oxide electrodes and a liquid electrolyte, typically lithium salts dissolved in an organic solvent. Batteries having this chemical makeup can explode and catch fire in the right conditions.
SRI International Introduces First Nonflammable Lithium Ion Battery For Consumer Products is an SRI press release from 1998 announcing the first non-flammable electrolyte for lithium-ion batteries. In 1998.
If you watch the news you'll occasionally see reports of laptops or cell phones blowing up. Ponder where you normally carry your cell phone, and what body parts are near that location. Are you sure you want to do this? In 2006-7 there was a spate of laptop fires that caught a lot of attention.
Cambridge scientists solve mystery of flammable laptop batteries is a 2010 report identifying dendrite formation as the culprit in these fires. Dendrites are lithium-metal fibers that form in battery cells in certain circumstances (high charge rates, for example) and can cause an internal short in the battery. The internal short causes a rapid discharge which leads to the battery explosion.
A 2005 study by NAVSEA,
Lithium Battery Safety: Good Batteries gone Bad, evaluated the safety of military use of lithium batteries. The military (Navy, Marines and Army in this study) have a growing array of batteries, of all kinds, being used in all kinds of equipment in all kinds of situations. It would obviously be a military hazard if combat equipment (which is increasingly computerized with mobile electronics hardware) were susceptible to lithium battery fires. The US DOT flammability assessment referenced below describes the extreme explosive flammability of some lithium batteries.
The types of devices they considered range from outright weapons like torpedo's or missiles, to portable communication and battlefield planning equipment. The list was presented in 2005 and one imagines that the advances of mobile computer technology since then have trickled down to military use. One imagines a battle hardened iPad sort of device could make a very nice battlefield planning widget.
The difference between good batteries and bad batteries is this:
A 2004 study by the Dept of Transportation and the FAA titled,
Flammability Assessment of Bulk-Packed non-Rechargeable Lithium Primary Batteries in Transport Cargo Aircraft DOT/FAA/AR-04/26, studied small-cell nonrechargeable lithium cells to see how flammable they are, and what can be done to mitigate the flammability. What they found was disturbing. At that time no known incident had occurred, but they cite a 1999 incident on a cargo ramp at LA International Airport. A pallet of batteries caught fire while being handled between flights. There was no known ignition source, they simply caught fire, and the fire was hard to extinguish.
The test used two types of then-common primary lithium cells:- CR2 and PL123A
AT&T's U-verse network cabinets were built using lithium batteries from Avestor to provide backup power supply. They deployed over 17,000 of these cabinets around the U.S. and then ran into serious problems when batteries in equipment cabinets began exploding.
"Following incidents involving batteries used in AT&T U-verse network cabinets, the company is replacing 17,000 similar batteries, all manufactured by Avestor. Normally, we would work with a vendor to diagnose problems and develop solutions. We can't do that in this case because Avestor filed for bankruptcy in October 2006 and closed shortly thereafter. As a result, we have decided to move forward with the removal of all Avestor batteries as quickly as possible," wrote an AT&T spokesperson.
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=143185