Spontaneous (re)combustion: Fire breaks out at a lithium battery storage facility, firefighters contain the blaze, then it sparks itself again
As long as lithium ion battery plants spontaneously combust and spew clouds of poisonous chemicals into the air, I don’t ever want to hear a progressive Democrat—voter, pundit, or politician—lecture me on the wildfires and “climate change” crises they swear are caused by my use of modest personal amenities.
On a tip from Monica Showalter comes this story, from the former paradise of southern California and The San Diego Union-Tribune (SDUT):
Fire flares up again at battery storage facility in Otay Mesa
An unpredictable blaze that sparked at a battery storage facility on Wednesday in Otay Mesa picked up again Thursday night, and firefighters worked to bring the flames back under control, a Cal Fire captain said Friday.
“Unpredictable blaze” my rear end. What a joke. In fact, the blaze was entirely predictable, because this was a warehouse of lithium-ion batteries, and lithium is highly flammable. That’s like saying no one could ever predict that a neighborhood meth lab might explode, or improperly stored ammonium nitrate at a fertilizer plant would also be a combustion hazard—when you’re dealing with extremely volatile compounds, there’s great risk involved, notwithstanding any propaganda that aims to diminish a particular fire hazard because there’s a “clean” energy communistic political agenda at play.
Now, the fire at the Gateway Energy Storage Facility first broke out around four o’clock in the afternoon this past Wednesday, and as is the case with lithium ion battery fires, they don’t really extinguish—lithium ion batteries are subject to what is called “thermal runaway,” or a chain reaction type of blaze. Fighting a fire like this means cooling down the battery as much as possible until the fire appears to extinguish or is at least under control; then you simply hope it doesn’t reignite, but you can’t actually know because you don’t know how many of the cells inside the battery pack have actually burned. If all the battery cells are burned, then it doesn’t reignite; if cooling the battery during the fire-fighting process halted the chain reaction, then the battery is at a serious risk of reigniting.
Now, Captain Mike Cornette’s crew cooled the battery storage blaze enough to get the fire to a manageable state, at which point they handed the work off to Gateway’s “mitigation team” to take over the job. However, as is obvious, the battery didn’t burn all the way, and reignited just a short time later. Here’s more, from SDUT:
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment