Laptop battery explosion

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Mevi
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by Mevi »

If my laptop bursts into flames, at least I won't have a life ending fall from 35,000ft. The 787 Dreamliner has been grounded because of the fires caused by the Li-ion batteries.
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pete
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by pete »

It reads like an intricate plot from some new novel. First the "race" between Boeing and Airbus; with Boeing trying to keep get top billing but Airbus beating them to the "punch".

I do have a "plane" story here...one day my wife and children and me were going to Florida. The kids were about 9-10 years old or so.....we would keep them separate by sitting in the aisle seats and keeping one child to the windows side of us.

My son would be playing his music or some little battery operated game and be in his own little world and my daughter would be listening to the flight attendant as if her life depended on her and reading the materials in the front seat pocket (for up to three hours) and peering out the windows in amazement that we could be so high up in a tin can...

And wife and I would just be "keeping" the piece between the two of them....

One day when we were sitting in the middle of the plane a bit over the wings and engines; a casual glance to one side and I saw flames coming from one of the engines. A few minutes later the pilot announced that he was putting out the fire and the place would fly just fine with one engine....the plot thickens.....the interval between seeing the flames and the announcement from the pilot of the plane seemed like a long time...but it really wasn't...the following happened during that short interval.

The young lady next to my son in the middle seat was the first one to see the flames on the engine before the announcement by the pilot over the intercom. My son looked up for maybe a second; then he went back to playing his hand held game. My daughter literally jumped from the window seat on her side of the isle; removing her seatbelt (which she never did) standing for a bit to get an eyeball view from her side to the window on my side. My wife told her sternly to sit and she went to the middle seat clinging with all of her attention to the window view of the engine with the flames on it (note that this all happened in a matter of seconds).

The flight attendants were walking up and down the center island. Passively just eyeballing the passengers. I have seen similiar except the flight attendant carried a clip board and was checking names (really just a checks and balances thing).

The young lady sitting between my son and I "badgered" my son regarding the engine fire she saw and asking if the plane was going to crash. He looked up once then at her and said no; and went back to his electronic game.

The pilot got on the public address system and stated the whole engine fire thing and that he had put out the fire and that the plane could fly fine with one engine. We were still out maybe about 30 minutes from our destination. He also mentioned not to be alarmed at the firetrucks/ambulances as they would be meeting us on the runway.

We landed fine and stopped at the end of the runway but far away from the gate. The little inflatable side ramps came out of the plane. The airport carted over a ramp and we got our stuff and deboarded the plane and all was well after that. My daughter talked about it after it happened a bit and my son really never mentioned much of it.
Last edited by pete on Mon Jan 21, 2013 11:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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BuZz
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by BuZz »

I removed the HD the other day to see the damage.
hd.jpg
somewhat scorched (with melted plastic on it).

I thought to power it up and see what happens - and guess what.. It actually works.! Tough drive! (Drive is a lot newer than the laptop, as I replaced the original 100gb drive - that was still working but had a few re-allocated sectors - with a quicker 160gb drive couple of years back)
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hawsey
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by hawsey »

Amazing it still works tho.
Bet you won't be reusing it tho :-o
Was there much smoke damage in your house BuZz?
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BuZz
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by BuZz »

no damage as far as I can see from the smoke, but it left bad smell, which is almost gone now a week later. had an air purifier running 24/7 which I think has helped. There was some smoke/carbon on some items on the table, which have since been cleaned, and a burn mark in the table.

not planning to use the drive. I'll put it back in the laptop, as Acer want the complete (as much as it is) machine for inspecting. I will wipe any personal documents/ssh keys/browser passwords etc though.
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by ilovemyjoggler »

BuZz wrote:I removed the HD the other day to see the damage - and guess what.. It actually works.!
Wow, that's really good! What a robust little thing. So, this...
ilovemyjoggler wrote:Are you saying you could access the info on the hard drive?
wasn't such a daft question after all!

The burnt remainder of your laptop looked nasty. Not sure I could bring myself to touch it.
Last edited by ilovemyjoggler on Tue Jan 22, 2013 12:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
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BuZz
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by BuZz »

Seems you are smarter than me when it comes to hardware. I didn't think the HD would show any signs of life!
ilovemyjoggler
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by ilovemyjoggler »

I'm really not! :lol:
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pete
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by pete »

Good news on the follow up from Acer on the laptop Buzz and that you could still get stuff from it!

My sister had a kitchen fire a few years back.

The only way she got rid of the smell was to repaint the whole kitchen (and she concurrently remodeled it - insurance company paid for this endeavor).
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QuackingPlums
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by QuackingPlums »

roobarb! wrote:We had some rack mount UPS units at a place I used to work. After a year or so they started beeping with a 'replace battery' warning. We had to dismantle the entire rack because the cells inside the units had swelled, making it impossible to slide the whole thing out. I left shortly after that, so never knew what happened to them.
I remember doing some work for a borough council many years ago. One morning I arrived at work to hear some kind of loud klaxon going off every few minutes in the underground car park. Nobody could work out what the klaxon was so we just assumed it was one of those over-zealous 3rd party car alarms - about 4 hours later the entire building was plunged into darkness.

Turns out the building was built with backup diesel generators that kick in when the UPS units run low, but it had been a long time since they'd had a power cut that outlasted the VA rating of the UPS batteries. Anyway, the klaxon was to tell us that the gens had been activated by a power cut overnight (odd that we hadn't noticed the whole town centre being without power either) but since nobody remembered the system ever being used, nobody recognised it. Still, it was impressive that they could run an entire council building for four hours before running out of fuel... :lol:
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Mevi
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by Mevi »

Pete, I think I'd be sh*tting bricks if I was on a burning plane. :D
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pete
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by pete »

It was just one of two engines and the pilot put the fire out right away.

Found an interesting article.
Dreamlining Boeing and batteries
Bill Schweber - January 22, 2013

You've undoubtedly seen the news that various fleets of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, which recently went into service, have been temporarily grounded while an apparent problem with some of its battery sets is checked out. (There have also been some fuel leaks, but that's another story.) Among the battery issues was a smoke-filled locker and fire damage that occurred when a plane was parked on the runway.

I'm not going to jump to conclusions about the problem or the cause. Any engineer with any experience knows that what appears to be "the problem" often is just a misleading manifestation of the real problem elsewhere, while the actual root cause (or causes) is often buried somewhere down the line in a long chain of events. Just because you see smoke doesn't mean that there's a fire where you think it is, so to speak.

But there's no doubt that there's a lot of advanced battery technology in the 787 - as well as many other of the latest devices, ranging from laptops to EVs/HEVs to aircraft. An excellent article from The Wall Street Journal - "Dreamliner-Like Batteries Raised Concerns" - and its associated graphic here (sorry, they may be behind a paywall) show how the Dreamliner 787 uses lots of electrical power for actuators and more, compared to earlier aircraft.

Why? That's easy to answer: in order to reduce weight and get the benefits of electronics and advanced algorithms, much of the conventional hydraulic power and control of the aircraft has been replaced by electrically-based power and control, and with advanced electronics and software, of course. (Plus, the airframe is also largely made of up composites for reduced weight, instead of conventional aluminum.)

These electrical systems require lots of batteries for start-up, backup, and even operation. The preferred rechargeable energy-storage technology for the batteries is based on lithium-based chemistry. This makes sense, since lithium offers much, much higher energy density (by weight and volume) than any other available battery chemistry.

But much more so than with older chemistries such as nickel cadmium, lithium cells also need lots of careful attention when charging and discharging: rate, temperature, internal external potential failures, and more. Plus, their energy density is so high that there's a lot of stored energy in that small volume, and a failure such as an internal short can result in huge current flows and subsequent fires or even explosions. (There are well-documented instances of laptops catching fire even though they were "off" and not even plugged into their AC line charger.)

So we have the typical engineering situation of a tricky tradeoff. We want the benefits of lower weight, greater efficiency, higher energy density, and so on, but we also have to accommodate and anticipate all the implications of the technology that makes it possible. In the case of energy and power, you have to have layers of protection, management, allowance for single and double faults, and planning for various failure sequences and scenarios - it's a lot of failure-mode planning to work through and anticipate.

And as all engineers know, you can't plan for everything, so you also have to have some independent, overall watchdogs in case something happens which you didn’t think of, or didn't plan for. It's also true that while lithium chemistry has such high density and subsequent danger, just remember that hydrocarbons such as gasoline have far greater energy density than the best batteries, yet we have managed to make that explosive technology into a safe energy-storage medium and power source. [Note that gasoline rates 46 MJ/kg and 36 MJ/liter; lithium-based batteries are around 1 MJ/kg and 2 MJ/liter, depending on the specific chemistry and design.]

Of course, the same politicians and activists who want engineers to perform miracles and deliver it all - better efficiency, lower weight, better products - will also be the first to scream and point fingers (and maybe lawsuits) when they don't get everything they wanted, and perhaps were promised. Once again, no good deed goes unpunished.

Have you ever been is a challenging design situation, where you were expected to deliver on a set of aggressive, conflicting goals by using advanced techniques and technologies? What sobering lessons did the experience teach you about both engineering and associated "politics?"
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/po ... -batteries
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QuackingPlums
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by QuackingPlums »

It's also worth pointing out that "Lithium" just refers to the lithium-based cathode on a very big family of battery chemistries that all have different characteristics (in much the same way that not all "alkaline" disposable batteries perform the same).

The make-up of the anode affects the reliability and volatility of the cell (as well as the energy density). Despite what certain journalists have tried to claim, the chemistry of the batteries in the 787 is unlikely to be the same as that in electric cars (with perhaps the exception of the Tesla), laptops or mobile phones.
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Mevi
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by Mevi »

I'm sure that I read somewhere recently that Toyota don't use Li-ion batteries. After their huge accelerator pedal recall, where their cars could speed out of control and kill you, they probably wanted to make it very clear that their cars now won't burst into flames and kill you. The best car I ever owned was a Toyota and I wouldn't hesitate to buy another.
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pete
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by pete »

Here I had a Mazda built in Hiroshima which I just literally gave to the neighbors sister.

It had something close to 260,000 miles on it. I was so attached to it that at 150,000 miles I burned out the engine (my fault); bought same car with 20,000 miles on it and took the engine out of it an put it in my Mazda.

That said we also have a Honda which just goes and goes...wife (historical) owned a Toyota and it ran and was fine for a few years with no problems ever on it. The bimmers have no issues and go and go. Mostly here though its been in the quality of service that I have experienced which lately has been literally "piss poor"; said to say I think I know now more about service my own than the local dealer (which really is a bad mark) having lately taken this up with BMW corporate....

They really need new technology though relating to this kind of stuff (electric cars) and its not really taken much precedence here; never has.
Last edited by pete on Sat Jan 26, 2013 3:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by ilovemyjoggler »

I'm wondering if there should be a warning on offtopic for people of a nervous disposition. Having been put off using my laptop whilst the battery is in it in case it explodes (thanks buZz), to using my mobile in case it explodes (thanks mevi), to flying in case the engines blow up (thanks pete) and now cars (thanks again mevi...) I don't think I'm going to read this topic anymore!
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pete
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by pete »

Think of it as an informative topic of stuff to be aware of...but not really that common enough for you to be afraid of.

New technologies are always around the corner for this kind of stuff...and what you read actually drives or "pushes" newer and better technologies.
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by ilovemyjoggler »

Pete. You've put a wonderful positive spin on it - glass half full kinda guy.

Annnd here I am reading off topic again...
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Mevi
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by Mevi »

There are so many dull and boring ways to go out, that anything with some kind of explosion or element of sheer terror has gotta be better, you know something that'll make the papers. ;P

Like no one ever hears about the 100 or so people who choke to death on pen caps each year. Anyway, it's a dirty habit, you don't know where it's been. :D

Using my laptop has turned into a game of Russian Roulette. It's thrilling.
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Re: Laptop battery explosion

Post by ilovemyjoggler »

Mevi, i think (in a strange way) you're saying something similar to pete but i've got to say, i prefer his way of expressing it - less gruesome! ;)
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