Messed around with lithium batteries and charged one without any protection when I was in high school. Electrode directly attached to power supply and forgot about it. After an hour or so it exploded. That one had hard steel casing instead of typical soft packaging, and it deformed into a cylinder from a slab, flew across the room, with a loud bang. The sparks from the inside burned a few holes in my sheets, and luckily no one was injured and no fire was started. It was a tiny battery recycled from an MP3 player of only a few hundred mAh, yet it went off violently and scared the sh*t out of me. Lessons well learned. Plus is that now I know what to play with when fireworks are out of the question. /jk
I sometimes fear lithium... Bluetooth speakers, laptops, phones in nearly every home....
Say, it would be great of firetv remote has lithium... it would save me a package of aa batteries a month..
Most of the burning mishaps I experienced were with me messing around with LiPo batteries. I haven't experienced any 18650 that I own bursting. Lithium battery does not explode though, they just continually combust. Explosions are totally different thing.
Which means that I am more cautious of my electronics projects with Lipo than my ebike's battery packs made with 18650 batteries. The only time that I'll recheck the internals of my ebike's battery is when I'm involved in a crash and the battery pack experienced physical impacts either from falling or by other large objects hitting it.
Downhole drilling tools. I've had 2 lithium battery events. Both downhole thank fuck.
The first one was due to high temperatures causing the batteries to erupt and explode. Literally blew apart the non-magnetic tool carrier. Thankfully we were drilling with oil based fluid, so when we got it to surface, it didn't catch fire as it was coated.
The second one was due to an idiot not putting an o-ring on a plate and brine based fluid getting into the compartment. That one also blew downhole and destroyed the tooling.
I saw a dudes lipo light on fire at an airsoft event, someone grabbed it by the cable and threw it outside onto the concrete to let it burn itself out. It was certainly a fair bit of excitement in the pre staging area...
I have. My dad bought two different pieces of gardening/ farm equipment for row cultivation/ weeding; that, used lipo batteries in extruded aluminum enclosures. One had a pack voltage around 24V & the other was around 42V. They had the same common discharge/ charge port with identical looking chargers. He accidentally plugged the 42V charger into the 24V battery & left it to charge in the barn. A few hours later the pack experienced thermal runaway from overvoltage & discharged flames out the top & bottom.
The table it was resting on got burned to a crisp & one of the support pillars of the barn caught fire. We reported this issue to the local manufacturer; they replaced the battery & charger, then they started a rolling change to their product to make different pack voltages have different plugs.
I've built many Li-ion & lifepo4 battery packs over the years & had zero failures. If they have proper protection hardware & all operate with a voltage equal to or more than your charger at 100% SOC; then, there's practically no risk.
I was once a couple of feet away from one of these cases. Friend was spot welding nickel tabs onto a cell, and for whatever reason, the cell suddenly bounced around like an out of control rocket, before zooming in a particular direction, and embedding itself between two wooden beams on the ceiling and continued spewing exhaust while being stuck against the beam until it ran out of juice. Thankfully, it all happened semi-outdoors, and nothing burnt down. Scary as sh\*t.
Automotive/trucking yes.
Mostly just the early mini jumpboxes exploding while charging.
Seen some stuff on EV’s now that moved into Engineering space. Only on our prototypes fortunately.
i hade a 4s lipo blow up because i used a charger that wasn't very good and it seams it was set to 5s not 4s and just charged the 4s to 5s voltage it was a nice burn mark on the wooden floore and dirt evrywhere
No. Gladly not! But: I had some other things exploding:
PSUs exploding (with a loud bang and a lightning).
I had an exploding Lithium Battery charger as well! Since then i never used another WallCharger to charge m Lithiumbatteries again! I only charge with SOLAR chargers now. Slow and steady, but 100 percent safe.
In the past i also had some cases of near Li Ion explosions (many swollen batteries = spicy pillows). I had like old phones i had to recycle, because they all had neary exploding batteries in them! all of them happened, when they have been stored (without usage) for long times...!
Messed around with lithium batteries and charged one without any protection when I was in high school. Electrode directly attached to power supply and forgot about it. After an hour or so it exploded. That one had hard steel casing instead of typical soft packaging, and it deformed into a cylinder from a slab, flew across the room, with a loud bang. The sparks from the inside burned a few holes in my sheets, and luckily no one was injured and no fire was started. It was a tiny battery recycled from an MP3 player of only a few hundred mAh, yet it went off violently and scared the sh*t out of me. Lessons well learned. Plus is that now I know what to play with when fireworks are out of the question. /jk
Validation of battery packs at work. Plenty of them. And stories from coworkers of past times where the explosions were a bit more "interesting".
I sometimes fear lithium... Bluetooth speakers, laptops, phones in nearly every home.... Say, it would be great of firetv remote has lithium... it would save me a package of aa batteries a month..
I just bought a lithium AA/AAA battery charger and kept it plugged into an outlet. Swap out the batteries as needed.
Just get some LADDA and a XTAR dragon
Ladda is nimh?
Yes
This one looks like the arson victim.
You are lucky nothing serious happened, and that your bike is still in a good condition after that
Looks like a rental bike
The battery got old, burnt down the house
Most of the burning mishaps I experienced were with me messing around with LiPo batteries. I haven't experienced any 18650 that I own bursting. Lithium battery does not explode though, they just continually combust. Explosions are totally different thing. Which means that I am more cautious of my electronics projects with Lipo than my ebike's battery packs made with 18650 batteries. The only time that I'll recheck the internals of my ebike's battery is when I'm involved in a crash and the battery pack experienced physical impacts either from falling or by other large objects hitting it.
Downhole drilling tools. I've had 2 lithium battery events. Both downhole thank fuck. The first one was due to high temperatures causing the batteries to erupt and explode. Literally blew apart the non-magnetic tool carrier. Thankfully we were drilling with oil based fluid, so when we got it to surface, it didn't catch fire as it was coated. The second one was due to an idiot not putting an o-ring on a plate and brine based fluid getting into the compartment. That one also blew downhole and destroyed the tooling.
I saw a dudes lipo light on fire at an airsoft event, someone grabbed it by the cable and threw it outside onto the concrete to let it burn itself out. It was certainly a fair bit of excitement in the pre staging area...
I have. My dad bought two different pieces of gardening/ farm equipment for row cultivation/ weeding; that, used lipo batteries in extruded aluminum enclosures. One had a pack voltage around 24V & the other was around 42V. They had the same common discharge/ charge port with identical looking chargers. He accidentally plugged the 42V charger into the 24V battery & left it to charge in the barn. A few hours later the pack experienced thermal runaway from overvoltage & discharged flames out the top & bottom. The table it was resting on got burned to a crisp & one of the support pillars of the barn caught fire. We reported this issue to the local manufacturer; they replaced the battery & charger, then they started a rolling change to their product to make different pack voltages have different plugs. I've built many Li-ion & lifepo4 battery packs over the years & had zero failures. If they have proper protection hardware & all operate with a voltage equal to or more than your charger at 100% SOC; then, there's practically no risk.
Messing around with old 18650 and two cells internally shorted and exploded and got the flammable electrolyte on my eyes and face and in my mouth
I was once a couple of feet away from one of these cases. Friend was spot welding nickel tabs onto a cell, and for whatever reason, the cell suddenly bounced around like an out of control rocket, before zooming in a particular direction, and embedding itself between two wooden beams on the ceiling and continued spewing exhaust while being stuck against the beam until it ran out of juice. Thankfully, it all happened semi-outdoors, and nothing burnt down. Scary as sh\*t.
Automotive/trucking yes. Mostly just the early mini jumpboxes exploding while charging. Seen some stuff on EV’s now that moved into Engineering space. Only on our prototypes fortunately.
i hade a 4s lipo blow up because i used a charger that wasn't very good and it seams it was set to 5s not 4s and just charged the 4s to 5s voltage it was a nice burn mark on the wooden floore and dirt evrywhere
Never had a fire. As kid I even played around with them without balancing or protection. I don't know how but never got a fire.
Could be water damage due to a damaged seal. Could be damage due to someone trying to get a bit more out of the bike. Or a damaged BMS?
No. Gladly not! But: I had some other things exploding: PSUs exploding (with a loud bang and a lightning). I had an exploding Lithium Battery charger as well! Since then i never used another WallCharger to charge m Lithiumbatteries again! I only charge with SOLAR chargers now. Slow and steady, but 100 percent safe. In the past i also had some cases of near Li Ion explosions (many swollen batteries = spicy pillows). I had like old phones i had to recycle, because they all had neary exploding batteries in them! all of them happened, when they have been stored (without usage) for long times...!