needing it, and God being willing and able to add an element with energy density greater than Li to the periodic table, are vewwy, vewwy different things.
Well, I know there's some research going on that aims to make lithium-ion batteries fire/combustion-proof. Whether this tech can make it to the mass market anytime soon, however, is a big if.
Panasonic's list of affected devices seems to be exactly the list of affected devices. As in, if you count the number of serial numbers there, you'll probably get the total sales of the thing.
Hard-to-extinguish fires are scary enough on the ground but they can be catastrophic in the air. That said, lithium ion chemistry is inherently unstable with a fail-deadly mechanism. We can't switch to safer chemistries fast enough.
We drive around in 6000lb death boxes with tanks full of hexanes all the time... The answer isn't always (almost never is if there is energy in play) the presence or absence of volatile compounds.
Ah yes, the societal leeches who do nothing but expect others to solve their problems in the name of the greater good. Definitely not enough of you on this planet.
Well that seems kind of harsh. What are you meant to do about exploding batteries if you're not working in that particular segment of that particular industry? It's like saying "you expect a doctor to go and solve your health problems because you're a leech". Er, no, it's because different people contribute to society in different ways. Yes, some don't contribute at all and are leeches but your attitude is quite sickening, really.
As for the problem, yes safer chemistry would be nice but you can never get way from the fact that we are talking about storing large amounts of energy in ever denser situations. Failures will almost certainly happen and that energy has to go somewhere.
The industry started to go down the Hydrogen road. Insert cartridges/tanks of hydrogen and woosh. I'm not sure that'd be much safer. Imagine crashing a car with a full tank of hydrogen.
"Imagine crashing a car with a full tank of hydrogen."
It's actually a hell of a lot safer, and well tested too: 1) Hydrogen can't pool below your car, which is why car fires are so deadly when gas tanks rupture. If it isn't hot enough to ignite the H2, it will harmlessly diffuse into the wind (and it's 10^10000000 x safer for the environment) 2) Hydrogen is already a gas, so there is no risk of a BLEVE event. Worst comes to worst your car becomes a flamethrower for a minute or so, no risk of explosions.
all true, but scale's a problem. there are a number of auto/building scale energy storage/generation techs that might help. not so much for the mobile form factors.
Ah, didn't think about it already being a gas and that alone being safer. My instinct is that to transport enough of it to be practical you'd need it liquid but equally any release into the external environment would immediately render it into a gas and as you say, cool flamethrower rather than shrapnel delivering mini bomb.
--The below may represent moderately inebriated babbling. Interpret with caution--
Not sure if it's more or less dangerous than petrol (although almost certainly not as safe as diesel) given the increased energy density of hydrocarbons and the incredibly low flash point of ordinary petrol (probably "gas" to you, I'm British) which I think is about -40C. That's of the reasons hydrogen won't take off in it's current form - a lot of the engineering challenges have been sorted (such as it making pipes brittle) but the simple fact is that hydrocarbon based fuel has a higher energy density and so you go further on a tank. When someone cracks storing hydrogen in a denser way, creating it without massively polluting and also ensuring it's safer to transport than petrol then we might be on to something. In the mean time, we're stuck with making good ole gasoline as efficient and non polluting as possible.
Personally I ride a motorcycle as my only means of transport and I find having a tank of stuff that explodes once it hits anything ~250C, atop an engine that probably has sections topping that temperature (do correct me if I'm wrong) placed between my legs to be an excellent way to travel in safety and comfort. Sarcasm aside, I actually get quite stressed and feel very unsafe when I have to drive a car and I've had a licence for that longer than I have a bike. I can't stand the detachment you get and I need to know what's going on beneath me - a bike tells you what the tyres are doing and so on whilst a car just feels numb, disconnected and unsafe. Plus I park exactly where I want to be, which is great for a cripple like me.
Dunno how I managed to switch onto to talking about bikes there...
-- That's of the reasons hydrogen won't take off in it's current form
and there's another reason: the laws of thermodynamics, which boil down to, "you don't get more energy out than you put in, and the best you can do is break even". more simply: creating free hydrogen (you can't lift it from the ground), and cooling it to liquid consumes far more energy, globally, than ends up in the tank. the advantage of petrol(s) is that the energy to create a litre of the stuff amounts, mostly, to just lifting it from the ground. cracking towers consume energy, but each level emits a different product, so the net energy cost per crack (is that a proper image?) is much less than the energy embedded in the product.
Yeh you're bang on. Currently hydrogen is generally extracted using natural gas and high pressure steam. The energy put in to extract this is way way way in excess of what you get out when you burn it to propel a car. If we are to do it on a large scale, it's gonna be sea water and electrolysis using nuclear power to even start being better for the environment than petrol. The efficiency of hydrogen as it is currently produced, combined with crappy energy density is just sickening. As I'm sure you're well aware.
Companies (and their engineers) sometimes either: a. Make honest mistakes - you can't travel in time to know how things perform over years without waiting years in many regards. You also can't predict with 100% accuracy what manufacturing tolerances will really be - you'll find out later. OR b. (more often) underestimate the creative stupidity of their customers.
Rarely do they publicly comment on "b" (aka: "the customer is always right"), but when you dig into things more often than not (not always, but often), you find that the product was adequately designed, but misused.
So, if you want leading edge tech, you have to deal with some risk. If that risk is too great or you don't trust the company to make ethical trade-offs, don't buy. Market forces are a beautiful thing.
The battery industry makes far too many mistakes. It went from exploding phones to an exploding factory/manufacturing plant. Things go wrong but in something so volatile I would make damn sure my potential explosive products didn't contain metal shavings or detonate when warm.
This is an industry that needs to be as close to perfect as possible.
16 batteries out of millions had a problem and you speak as if this is some kind of catastrophe. Even assuming that 10x that number of failures happened but went unreported, this is still a tiny tiny drop in the bucket compared to the millions of customers who had no problems. Have some perspective please.
Yup, all the herp-derpers like you who feels so wronged by the ZOMG-so-unsafe billions of lithium batteries out there should just carry portable diesel generators everywhere using flammable liquids and breathing in the toxic fumes for their mobile phones. Or pulling hand cranks till you see the doctor. That ought to teach the battery industry just how worthless they are!
I don't think you even know just how *stupid* you sound.
-- just carry portable diesel generators everywhere using flammable liquids and breathing in the toxic fumes for their mobile phones.
it can't go unremarked that, if The Donald gets his way, we'll all (in cities, anyway, which are True Blue and thus deserve it) get air like northern China, thanks to the enforcement of the Clean Coal Initiative. be careful what you wish for and vote for. it might not turn out the way you expect.
Your comment is profoundly absurd. it would be challenging to find a statement that is further from the truth. The closest I can get is to say you are a genius.
I'm genuinely concerned about this. I know it isn't all of them. How stupid do you sound attacking someone rather than discussing something and providing an actual point?
why is it stupid to point out that there are more dangerous sources of toxic fumes to actually worry about???? The Donald's zealots let him say any silly thing he wants. that's not a good thing. in any discussion.
So there's a known fault in the boiler in your house which could burn it down. It's a 1 in a million. They've sold 20 million and 20 houses will burn down. It's a simple fix. Do you do it or do you leave your family to potentially burn to a crisp? That's the difference between a risk and a hazard. The risk is very low but the hazard is high enough (and rectification easy enough) that action must be taken.
Or if you have one of these, feel free to keep charging it in your own house, far away from me.
They all have potential faults which is why I charge high energy lithium based batteries in a fireproof bag as I have some understanding of the failure mechanisms and the amount of energy begging to get out. As well as mass production allowing tolerances...
Constantly attacking people rather than discussing makes you sound like an idiot. And I'm unsure what "herp-derpers" means but I don't speak fluent moron (I assume yours is the "abusive twat" dialect?).
Oh and I don't think anyone here blames the battery industry for anything. All manufactured products have faults and all systems have feedback. that's like blaming the manufacturers of pacemakers when one is faulty - if they've put in reasonable precautions, knowledge of the vagaries of mass production immediately forgives them. The battery industry enables a massive amount of technology to work and huge human progress. Naturally, failure in this industry can be catastrophic due to the energy stored and prevalence of batteries. It's not blaming anyone, it's simply acknowledging the facts of the situation.
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Chaitanya - Saturday, May 20, 2017 - link
we need better battery tech soon, Li-Ion is quite scary even under best of conditions.FunBunny2 - Sunday, May 21, 2017 - link
needing it, and God being willing and able to add an element with energy density greater than Li to the periodic table, are vewwy, vewwy different things.Stochastic - Sunday, May 21, 2017 - link
Well, I know there's some research going on that aims to make lithium-ion batteries fire/combustion-proof. Whether this tech can make it to the mass market anytime soon, however, is a big if.WPX00 - Saturday, May 20, 2017 - link
Panasonic's list of affected devices seems to be exactly the list of affected devices. As in, if you count the number of serial numbers there, you'll probably get the total sales of the thing.HomeworldFound - Saturday, May 20, 2017 - link
People are worried enough about terrorist attacks using laptops. Panasonic should be making sure their batteries are safe BEFORE they sell them.serendip - Sunday, May 21, 2017 - link
Hard-to-extinguish fires are scary enough on the ground but they can be catastrophic in the air. That said, lithium ion chemistry is inherently unstable with a fail-deadly mechanism. We can't switch to safer chemistries fast enough.cekim - Sunday, May 21, 2017 - link
We drive around in 6000lb death boxes with tanks full of hexanes all the time... The answer isn't always (almost never is if there is energy in play) the presence or absence of volatile compounds.fanofanand - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
Speak for yourself, my vehicle is a svelte 2,863 lbs. :)StrangerGuy - Sunday, May 21, 2017 - link
Ah yes, the societal leeches who do nothing but expect others to solve their problems in the name of the greater good. Definitely not enough of you on this planet.philehidiot - Sunday, May 21, 2017 - link
Well that seems kind of harsh. What are you meant to do about exploding batteries if you're not working in that particular segment of that particular industry? It's like saying "you expect a doctor to go and solve your health problems because you're a leech". Er, no, it's because different people contribute to society in different ways. Yes, some don't contribute at all and are leeches but your attitude is quite sickening, really.As for the problem, yes safer chemistry would be nice but you can never get way from the fact that we are talking about storing large amounts of energy in ever denser situations. Failures will almost certainly happen and that energy has to go somewhere.
HomeworldFound - Sunday, May 21, 2017 - link
The industry started to go down the Hydrogen road. Insert cartridges/tanks of hydrogen and woosh. I'm not sure that'd be much safer. Imagine crashing a car with a full tank of hydrogen.basroil - Sunday, May 21, 2017 - link
"Imagine crashing a car with a full tank of hydrogen."It's actually a hell of a lot safer, and well tested too:
1) Hydrogen can't pool below your car, which is why car fires are so deadly when gas tanks rupture. If it isn't hot enough to ignite the H2, it will harmlessly diffuse into the wind (and it's 10^10000000 x safer for the environment)
2) Hydrogen is already a gas, so there is no risk of a BLEVE event. Worst comes to worst your car becomes a flamethrower for a minute or so, no risk of explosions.
FunBunny2 - Monday, May 22, 2017 - link
-- It's actually a hell of a lot saferall true, but scale's a problem. there are a number of auto/building scale energy storage/generation techs that might help. not so much for the mobile form factors.
philehidiot - Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - link
Ah, didn't think about it already being a gas and that alone being safer. My instinct is that to transport enough of it to be practical you'd need it liquid but equally any release into the external environment would immediately render it into a gas and as you say, cool flamethrower rather than shrapnel delivering mini bomb.philehidiot - Monday, May 22, 2017 - link
--The below may represent moderately inebriated babbling. Interpret with caution--Not sure if it's more or less dangerous than petrol (although almost certainly not as safe as diesel) given the increased energy density of hydrocarbons and the incredibly low flash point of ordinary petrol (probably "gas" to you, I'm British) which I think is about -40C. That's of the reasons hydrogen won't take off in it's current form - a lot of the engineering challenges have been sorted (such as it making pipes brittle) but the simple fact is that hydrocarbon based fuel has a higher energy density and so you go further on a tank. When someone cracks storing hydrogen in a denser way, creating it without massively polluting and also ensuring it's safer to transport than petrol then we might be on to something. In the mean time, we're stuck with making good ole gasoline as efficient and non polluting as possible.
Personally I ride a motorcycle as my only means of transport and I find having a tank of stuff that explodes once it hits anything ~250C, atop an engine that probably has sections topping that temperature (do correct me if I'm wrong) placed between my legs to be an excellent way to travel in safety and comfort. Sarcasm aside, I actually get quite stressed and feel very unsafe when I have to drive a car and I've had a licence for that longer than I have a bike. I can't stand the detachment you get and I need to know what's going on beneath me - a bike tells you what the tyres are doing and so on whilst a car just feels numb, disconnected and unsafe. Plus I park exactly where I want to be, which is great for a cripple like me.
Dunno how I managed to switch onto to talking about bikes there...
HomeworldFound - Monday, May 22, 2017 - link
Either way it works man.FunBunny2 - Monday, May 22, 2017 - link
-- That's of the reasons hydrogen won't take off in it's current formand there's another reason: the laws of thermodynamics, which boil down to, "you don't get more energy out than you put in, and the best you can do is break even". more simply: creating free hydrogen (you can't lift it from the ground), and cooling it to liquid consumes far more energy, globally, than ends up in the tank. the advantage of petrol(s) is that the energy to create a litre of the stuff amounts, mostly, to just lifting it from the ground. cracking towers consume energy, but each level emits a different product, so the net energy cost per crack (is that a proper image?) is much less than the energy embedded in the product.
philehidiot - Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - link
Yeh you're bang on. Currently hydrogen is generally extracted using natural gas and high pressure steam. The energy put in to extract this is way way way in excess of what you get out when you burn it to propel a car. If we are to do it on a large scale, it's gonna be sea water and electrolysis using nuclear power to even start being better for the environment than petrol. The efficiency of hydrogen as it is currently produced, combined with crappy energy density is just sickening. As I'm sure you're well aware.cekim - Sunday, May 21, 2017 - link
Companies (and their engineers) sometimes either:a. Make honest mistakes - you can't travel in time to know how things perform over years without waiting years in many regards. You also can't predict with 100% accuracy what manufacturing tolerances will really be - you'll find out later.
OR
b. (more often) underestimate the creative stupidity of their customers.
Rarely do they publicly comment on "b" (aka: "the customer is always right"), but when you dig into things more often than not (not always, but often), you find that the product was adequately designed, but misused.
So, if you want leading edge tech, you have to deal with some risk. If that risk is too great or you don't trust the company to make ethical trade-offs, don't buy. Market forces are a beautiful thing.
HomeworldFound - Sunday, May 21, 2017 - link
The battery industry makes far too many mistakes. It went from exploding phones to an exploding factory/manufacturing plant. Things go wrong but in something so volatile I would make damn sure my potential explosive products didn't contain metal shavings or detonate when warm.This is an industry that needs to be as close to perfect as possible.
bji - Sunday, May 21, 2017 - link
16 batteries out of millions had a problem and you speak as if this is some kind of catastrophe. Even assuming that 10x that number of failures happened but went unreported, this is still a tiny tiny drop in the bucket compared to the millions of customers who had no problems. Have some perspective please.HomeworldFound - Monday, May 22, 2017 - link
I'm not just talking about Panasonic here. This issue has been ongoing for more than 20 years.StrangerGuy - Monday, May 22, 2017 - link
Yup, all the herp-derpers like you who feels so wronged by the ZOMG-so-unsafe billions of lithium batteries out there should just carry portable diesel generators everywhere using flammable liquids and breathing in the toxic fumes for their mobile phones. Or pulling hand cranks till you see the doctor. That ought to teach the battery industry just how worthless they are!I don't think you even know just how *stupid* you sound.
FunBunny2 - Monday, May 22, 2017 - link
-- just carry portable diesel generators everywhere using flammable liquids and breathing in the toxic fumes for their mobile phones.it can't go unremarked that, if The Donald gets his way, we'll all (in cities, anyway, which are True Blue and thus deserve it) get air like northern China, thanks to the enforcement of the Clean Coal Initiative. be careful what you wish for and vote for. it might not turn out the way you expect.
fanofanand - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
Your comment is profoundly absurd. it would be challenging to find a statement that is further from the truth. The closest I can get is to say you are a genius.HomeworldFound - Monday, May 22, 2017 - link
I'm genuinely concerned about this. I know it isn't all of them. How stupid do you sound attacking someone rather than discussing something and providing an actual point?FunBunny2 - Monday, May 22, 2017 - link
-- How stupidwhy is it stupid to point out that there are more dangerous sources of toxic fumes to actually worry about???? The Donald's zealots let him say any silly thing he wants. that's not a good thing. in any discussion.
philehidiot - Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - link
So there's a known fault in the boiler in your house which could burn it down. It's a 1 in a million. They've sold 20 million and 20 houses will burn down. It's a simple fix. Do you do it or do you leave your family to potentially burn to a crisp? That's the difference between a risk and a hazard. The risk is very low but the hazard is high enough (and rectification easy enough) that action must be taken.Or if you have one of these, feel free to keep charging it in your own house, far away from me.
They all have potential faults which is why I charge high energy lithium based batteries in a fireproof bag as I have some understanding of the failure mechanisms and the amount of energy begging to get out. As well as mass production allowing tolerances...
Constantly attacking people rather than discussing makes you sound like an idiot. And I'm unsure what "herp-derpers" means but I don't speak fluent moron (I assume yours is the "abusive twat" dialect?).
philehidiot - Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - link
Oh and I don't think anyone here blames the battery industry for anything. All manufactured products have faults and all systems have feedback. that's like blaming the manufacturers of pacemakers when one is faulty - if they've put in reasonable precautions, knowledge of the vagaries of mass production immediately forgives them. The battery industry enables a massive amount of technology to work and huge human progress. Naturally, failure in this industry can be catastrophic due to the energy stored and prevalence of batteries. It's not blaming anyone, it's simply acknowledging the facts of the situation.creed3020 - Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - link
Looks like I am going to have to get some folks to bring their field gear back in as we're impacted by this recall....sigh