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Sri Lanka Airlines Near-Fire Raises Battery Questions Again

On Sunday, July 30, a Sri Lankan Airline A330-200 with 202 passengers aboard was flying from Kochi, India to Colombo, Sri Lanka when smoke was detected coming from an overhead compartment.

The flight attendants, who immediately suspected a lithium-ion battery fire, sprayed the luggage with a fire extinguisher. When that failed to stop the smoke, they dowsed the luggage in water and that did the trick. According to an airline statement. “The situation was successfully contained and the bag ceased to emit smoke. Upon investigation, the crew found a lithium battery pack and two mobile phones in the bag.”

The plane and its passengers landed safely after the short, but eventful, a 70-minute flight. An investigation is ongoing. If anything, this incident shows the importance of well-trained and quick-thinking flight attendants. But realistically, flight attendants are the last line of defense in a chain that should go all the way back up to the battery and device manufacturers.

The incident summons memories of thousands of flights last September and October, where boarding announcements included demands for passengers to surrender any Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones in their possession.

According to report that began with the phrase “Smartphones going up in flames,” Samsung admitted to 35 incidents of phones catching fire, and started a recall of more than 2 million phones. It’s worth noting that this isn’t just a Samsung problem. Apple iPhones have been reported to catch fire as well. And perhaps concerns should extend from the sky to the roadway, as Tesla vehicles use thousands of lithium-ion battery cells, which have reportedly caught fire in accidents in Indiana and the Netherlands.

If it’s hard to recall the panic around the Note 7 recall, try recalling the “hoverboard” ban of Christmas 2015. A fad now largely in the rear-view mirror, hoverboards are self-balancing two-wheel scooters built on gyroscopic technology. They use an electric motor to propel the user down the street. More than 60 airlines banned hoverboards because of concerns about—you guessed it—their lithium-ion battery packs. The batteries were large, in order to power the scooter. And like any good fad, dozens of knock-off manufacturers jumped in, potentially bypassing safeguards found in more expensive products like smartphones and tablets.

Even less remembered is the notebook battery crisis of 2006, when some 9.6 million batteries made by Sony and used in notebook computers made by Dell, Apple, Toshiba and others were recalled.

But concerns with lithium-ion batteries, pervasive as the technology is, go back much further. The technology was originally developed in the 1970’s, as it permitted much more power density than nickel cadmium or lead-acid batteries. But with that power came volatility.

 Twenty-one years ago, when I was editing PC LapTop Magazine, I had to tell our readers that laptop shipments might be constrained because of a fire in a lithium-ion battery factory. The fire was reportedly caused by a lithium-ion battery
More recently, several cargo planes have apparently been destroyed by the combustion of lithium-ion batteries they were transporting as bulk cargo. In 2010, a UPS 747 cargo aircraft caught fire and crashed near Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. In 2013, an investigation determined the fire was started by the lithium-ion battery cargo. The smoke detection equipment on the aircraft took too long to notify the pilots, the heat from the fire disabled the oxygen system, and the smoke obscured the pilots’ vision. Both were killed in the resulting crash.
In 2016, ICAO (the International Civil Aircraft Organization) prohibited the carrying of lithium-ion batteries as cargo shipments on passenger aircraft. The announcement noted the prohibition “has been eagerly awaited by aircraft manufacturer and pilots associations, which have been the most vocal advocates for the new safety measure.”

All this is not to indict the battery in your smartphone, tablet or notebook. The odds are overwhelming that years of testing and development have made it safe. All the same, this week’s smoke-in-the-cabin incident may not be the last we hear about our indispensable but occasionally troublesome companion, the Lithium-ion battery.

Source: Forbes News

 

 

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