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4/23/2012

Is Lithium-Ion A Borgia Battery?

I've recently learned that lithium-ion batteries might be a triple threat - Borgia batteries - cherished by eco-royalty, poisonous in the extreme, and explosive enough to wreak havoc in a $25 million laboratory that was built to safely manage dell inspiron 1501 battery explosions.
Is it a battery or a WMD?
On April 11th five employees of the advanced battery laboratory at the General Motors (GM) Technical Center in Warren, Michigan were hurt when extreme testing of a prototype lithium-ion battery pack from A123 Systems (AONE) released chemical gases that exploded inside a testing chamber. Four were treated at the scene and one was taken to a local hospital. The injuries were not life threatening.
About 1,100 employees who work in the Warren facility were evacuated while a HAZMAT team spent four hours taking air samples inside and outside the building. While most of the evacuees were able to return to work, it's unclear how long it will take to repair about $5 million of damage to the battery laboratory and resume operations.
GM quickly advised the media that the incident didn't involve a battery for the GM Volt and technically there was no battery explosion at all. Engineers were simply conducting extreme overcharge tests on a prototype hp mini 110-1014tu battery and it failed, which is exactly what you'd expect.
Or is it?
The fact that there was a battery failure and vented gases ignited doesn't surprise me. The fact that the explosion was violent enough to cause major structural damage to a purpose-built facility that was designed to safely manage the occasional battery explosion is very troubling. The chemical composition of the gas that allegedly caused the explosion is a nightmare. The terrifying aspect is that these issues are being ignored, or at least swept under the rug, to protect the tarnished image of GM's Volt.
On Friday the 13th, Torque News reported:
The battery involved in the Wednesday morning explosion didn't actually explode but rather gases created in the testing chamber ignited and caused the massive explosion. During the extreme testing process, hydrogen sulfide gas collected in the testing area and when that cloud of gas ignited - we had the massive explosion that injured five and did significant damage to the Alternative Energy Center testing area including blowing out windows and at least one 8" thick door. Afterwards, the reports indicate that the battery for acer aspire 5920g pack itself was still intact.
It may just be my lawyer's fascination with words and sentence structure, but the second sentence of that paragraph sure sounds like an unattributed direct quote from somebody in the know at GM.
I'm not a chemist, but I have substantial oil and gas experience including three years as legal counsel for Boots & Coots, the largest oil field disaster response firm in the world. Because of that experience I know that hydrogen sulfide gas (H2S) is:
  • The reason rotten eggs stink;
  • Explosive at concentrations of 43,000 to 460,000 PPM; and
  • One of the deadliest poisons known to man.
In the US, Occupational Safety and Health Regulations prohibit exposure to H2S concentrations above 100 PPM without a full facepiece pressure demand self-contained breathing apparatus.
A Wikipedia search shows that an H2S concentration of 150 PPM paralyzes the olfactory nerve, killing the sense of smell; 800 PPM is the lethal concentration for 50% of humans with five minutes of exposure; and concentrations over 1,000 PPM can cause immediate respiratory arrest after a single breath.
That makes H2S sudden death by poisoning at 2.3% of the concentration required for an explosion.
If a comparable failure occurred in a moving car, the driver would be incapacitated in seconds while his vehicle careened into a crowded latte bar before exploding.
I know there's nothing inherently dangerous in the anode and cathode materials for today's advanced lithium-ion batteries. In fact I was surprised by the reports that a lithium-ion battery for Dell Latitude D630 could generate enough H2S gas to cause an explosion. When I started to ask questions, however, I learned that any number of electrolyte additives, separators, binders, fillers and ancillary cell materials could release highly toxic fumes from a failing cell or battery pack.
The active materials may be wonderful in their own right, but everything that goes into a cell must be carefully evaluated for its capacity to chemically interact with other cell materials and pose a serious threat to human health and safety.
We know the process failed at least once.
GM's "industrial accident" may be a one-off oddity if it was testing an exotic lithium-sulfur battery or something else that's radically different from conventional lithium-ion batteries. It may also be just the tip of an iceberg, the first example of unintended interactions between cell components that can render large format lithium-ion batteries too dangerous for use in passenger vehicles or other enclosed spaces.
100 years ago the Titanic was heralded as an engineering marvel until a completely unexpected turn of events in April 1912 forced engineers to question their basic assumptions. I believe the GM explosion should at least force some soul searching.
For four years I've heard nothing but safety talk from lithium-ion Apple a1280 Battery manufacturers, ideologues, politicians and would-be end users. This is the first report I've seen that threatens to burst the bubble. If H2S gas was generated in GM's advanced battery laboratory we need to know how much H2S gas was generated, how it was generated and how long the process took. We also need to know to a certainty whether similar problems might exist in large format lithium-ion batteries from other manufacturers. I understand that every battery manufacturer wants to keep its secret sauce recipe proprietary, but there comes a time when customer safety has to take precedence over competitive advantage.
I'm the first to admit profound confusion over the facts that have been reported so far. But there seems to be a consensus that a poisonous gas was generated by a failing battery, concentrations rose to explosive levels in the testing chamber, and the resulting explosion caused major structural damage to a facility that was built in 2009 and designed to withstand catastrophic battery failures.
Under the circumstances, I'm convinced that somebody who doesn't have a political, ideological or economic interest in the safety of lithium-ion batteries needs to get on the ball and conduct a comprehensive independent investigation to find out exactly what happened and whether comparable risks exist in the battery packs used by Fisker Motors, Ford (F), Tesla Motors (TSLA), Nissan (NSANY.PK), Toyota (TM) and others. I can only hope that an upcoming NHTSA technical symposium with battery manufacturers and automakers will mark the beginning of more rigorous regulatory oversight.
Borgia battery? Inaccurate descriptions from reporters? Prototype testing of a truly unique battery chemistry? Or simply a conventional automotive grade lithium-ion Kodak cx6330 Battery that was pushed beyond design limits and failed spectacularly? The difference has to be understood before we go much further.
(click to enlarge)4.21.12 BI Toon.jpg
This article was first published in the Spring 2012 issue of Toshiba pa3420u-1brs Batteries International Magazine and I'd like to thank editor Mike Halls and cartoonist Jan Darasz for their contributions.

4/13/2012

Reporter's Notebook: Battery plant to boost Chicago economy

A Los Angeles company building charging stations in Chicago for electric vehicles is jumping into the battery business.

350Green LLC, which is installing 280 charging stations in Chicago and the suburbs, confirmed Thursday that it plans to open a $3.5 million assembly plant on Chicago's Northwest Side to produce Acer Aspire 7735Z batteries to store electricity produced by the sun, wind or, during off-peak times, from the electrical grid.

The idea, said Mariana Gerzanych, chief executive of 350Green, is to tap those batteries during peak demand times on the grid — like on hot summer days when air conditioners are being used. Electrical grid operators pay so-called peak shavers like 350Green for agreeing to tap stored battery power to reduce demand on the grid.

"It will make a big difference in the industry," Gerzanych said. "As the electric car industry grows, we can connect it more and more to solar."

The Acer Aspire 5742 batteries are small, but some will have about the same storage capacity as those used in the all-electric Nissan Leaf, Gerzanych said. The first are expected to roll out by January. Gerzanych said the plant would employ about 86 people.

The facility, to be located at 2500 W. Bradley Place, would be paid for in part by a $1.5 million grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity and $800,000 in tax-increment financing from the city. Both subsidies have been approved and are in the final sign-off stages, according to Gerzanych.

Byron shutdown still a mystery: Almost three months after the Byron nuclear plant suddenly lost power, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is trying to determine what happened and whether a similar outage could occur at other nuclear plants.

According to a special inspection report released late last month, inspectors spent 15 days at Byron trying to get to the bottom of the outage. The plant lost off-site power, which was supposed to automatically trigger backup diesel generators to turn on. But the generators had to be switched on manually. As a result, a 1,136-megawatt nuclear unit at Byron shut down.

No one was injured, but the NRC said it wants to be sure it doesn't happen again.

The plant is owned by Chicago-based Exelon. The NRC said it is working to determine if plant operators could have prevented the incident or if a larger design problem caused the system breakdown.

Illinois riding the wind: Other than California, Illinois installed more new wind capacity than any other state in 2011, spending $1 billion, according to an annual report from the American Wind Energy Association released Thursday.

The state ranks fourth in the nation for wind capacity installed, with enough to power about 750,000 homes. About 30 facilities making wind components employ 6,000 people in Illinois. Illinois has the third-highest number of jobs in the wind industry, after Iowa and Texas.

Still, wind is a fraction of the state's overall energy footprint. About 3.2 percent of electricity is produced by wind turbines, just above the national average of 2.9 percent.
tags: Canon Bp-711 Battery, Canon Digital Ixus v3 Battery, Acer Aspire 5735 Battery, SONY ERICSSON S700I PDA battery, Acer Aspire 5920 Battery

NU student-run company wins $100K: NuMat Technologies, a startup company led by students at Northwestern University, won $100,000 in financing last month at the second Clean Energy Challenge. The company developed a technology that can produce fuel tanks for natural gas-powered vehicles that are cheaper, safer and have a larger capacity than what is available.

More than 100 early-stage and student-led companies applied to the Challenge. Ten early-stage finalist and eight student finalists presented business plans to a panel of investors, corporations and entrepreneurs at an event in Chicago. The finalists were coached by volunteer mentors working with the Clean Energy Trust, a nonprofit technology accelerator in Chicago.

4/04/2012

Need the Most Life from Your Laptop’s Battery? Use IE, Not Chrome

We regularly test the four most popular browsers for speed, but what about laptop battery life? If you're on a laptop, an extra 20 minutes can make a pretty big difference. Weblog 7Tutorials did a battery life test of each browser, and found that Internet Explorer was the most likely to give you a noticeable battery boost.
They used the Peacekeeper battery test on Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera, on a clean install of Windows 7 using the Power Saver power plan, and run three times to get an average for each browser. Internet Explorer 9 came out ahead, providing 104 minutes of ibm thinkpad t40 laptop battery life in the Peacekeeper test, with Opera not far behind at 100 minutes. Firefox lagged behind a bit at 92 minutes, while Chrome got almost 20 minutes less, lasting only 85 minutes.
Obviously, your mileage may vary on this, but it's a good thing to know if you're in a bind and need to squeeze every ounce of Acer Aspire 3000 battery from your laptop. Hit the link to read more about their methodology and the results.
The problem is that if you use IE, you'll inevitably end up chucking your laptop across the room in frustration and your laptop batteries will be destroyed.
(just kidding IE9 really isn't that terrible)
It isn't "using IE" that's really the problem. It's "coding so that IE shows something at least close to what you originally had in mind and looks perfect in Firefox and Chrome."
promoted by Bilbo Baggins
I just dislike the reverse: devs that code sites for IE and a watered down version for your Chrome/Firefox. I'm looking at you, Juno Web Mail and Microsoft Outlook Web Access.
OWA works great for me in Chrome, I use it all the time. I also use sharepoint for work, for which IE tab extension works pretty well
promoted by Bilbo Baggins
Really, now, IE9 seems to do fine on most things I make and test in Firefox. (Though the lack of text-shadow is annoying...)
But it forces you to use the light version unless in IE.
Have you used IE9? I've seen more and more websites telling me I need Chrome, Firefox, or Opera to use the site. This absolutely kills me at school, to the point where I used a bypass to restore command prompt function and wrote up some registry code so I could join the administrator workgroup and install Chrome. Not to mention the stupid "compatibility view". Why do I need to turn that on? Why would they not just leave it on all of the time?