Airlines are becoming increasingly concerned about the potential fire hazard posed by lithium-ion batteries that power cell phones, laptops and many other electronic devices, USA Today reports.
When the batteries short-circuit or get too hot, airline officials say, they can cause fires and explosions. Non-rechargeable lithium metal batteries such as those in cameras and flashlights are a concern, too.
From 1991 through early April of this year, batteries and electronic devices powered by batteries were linked to 113 incidents involving “smoke, fire, extreme heat or explosion” on passenger and cargo planes, according to Federal Aviation Administration figures.
There are no rules that restrict how many batteries passengers can bring on a plane–only a rule that prohibits packing extra batteries in checked luggage.
In January, however, the U.S. Department of Transportation proposed more stringent rules for companies that ship lithium batteries in cargo holds. Under the regulations, batteries shipped on passenger planes would have to be kept in more fire-resistant cargo compartments with fire-extinguishing systems, while those shipped on cargo planes would have to be stored in areas accessible to the pilot, in case of fire.
Some scientists believe that lithium-ion batteries could be more than just a potential fire hazard–they could also be rigged together to create an explosive device.
Dan Abraham, a materials scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois, says even a single cellphone battery could start a fire. “A smart terrorist can start fires with these things,” he says. “Any energy-storage device packs a lot of energy in a small space and can be used for good or evil.”
The Association of Flight Attendants, a trade group that represents more than 50,000 attendants, believes there should be a limit to the number of lithium-ion batteries passengers are allowed to carry on board.
But a spokeswoman for the Transportation Security Administration said that the agency has studied the issue, and found that lithium-ion batteries “cannot be used as an explosive and are not a security threat in personal carry-on quantities.”
We agree there is a public safety need to mitigate fire hazards associated with advanced Li-ion batteries, particularly when carried onboard aircraft in passengers’ luggage, or when large numbers of such batteries are shipped in densely packed arrays placed inside various types of containers stored in aircraft cargo holds during flight.
Interestingly, our company has applied specialized theoretical knowledge on a practical level to try to understand the underlying causes of certain anomalous fires and explosions that occasionally occur in smaller lithium-ion batteries as well as in large multi-battery packs. In doing so, we have uncovered what may be a new class of potentially serious, previously unrecognized safety risks arising from Lithium metal dendrite structures that can ‘grow’ over time inside Li-ion batteries. A new paper by academic researchers published in May 2010 supports our deep concerns about the involvement of dendrites in catastrophic Li-ion battery failures (please see R. Bhattacharyya et al., “In situ NMR observation of the formation of metallic Lithium microstructures in Lithium batteries,” Nature Materials 9 pp. 504 – 510). Details of our thoughts on this new source of concern have been publicly released in a 68-slide technical presentation on SlideShare.net titled, “Low Energy Neutron Reactions (LENRs) in Advanced Batteries and Other Condensed Matter Environments — Could LENRs be involved in some Li-ion battery fires?” See URL=
http://www.slideshare.net/lewisglarsen/cfakepathlattice-energy-llc-len-rs-in-liion-battery-firesjuly-16-2010