[Elecraft] lithium AA's etc.

Cortland Richmond cortlandka5s at netscape.net
Thu Mar 3 16:39:10 EST 2005


Tim O'Rourke  wrote:

 >I have never seen an article abt a cell phone cataching on fire but I 
guess it probably happens.

"You can add explosions to the hazards associated with cell phones. 
Federal safety officials say they've received 83 reports of cell phones 
exploding or catching fire in the past two years. The industry blames 
counterfeit batteries but others aren't so sure."
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/cell_phone_batteries.html

The below FAA study of Lithium battery shipments is interesting. too.  
Excerpts:
"There has never been a known in-flight fire associated with shipping 
the batteries in this manner; however, a ramp incident involving 
palletized batteries has drawn attention to the flammability hazard of 
primary lithium batteries. The ramp incident occurred at Los Angeles 
International Airport in April 1999. A pallet of batteries caught fire 
while being handled between flights. There was no known external 
ignition source. The nature of lithium fires makes them very difficult 
to extinguish, with all common extinguishing agents ineffective in 
controlling the fire."

"... discharging the halon after only one battery was ignited had no 
effect on stopping the propagation of the battery fire to adjacent 
batteries. The halon extinguished the 1-propanol fire immediately but 
had no effect on the lithium fire with the exception of turning the 
normally white sparks bright red."
http://www.fire.tc.faa.gov/pdf/04-26.pdf

Bright red! How... pretty.

There are documented reports of Lithium cell fire or explosion in 
Automatic External Defibrillators (AED's):
"The International Association of Fire Fighters has received a report 
regarding an explosion from an automatic external defibrillator (AED) 
commonly used by the fire and emergency services.

On Friday, October 15, 1999, a Physio-Control LIFEPAK 500 exploded and 
injured two firefighters. The incident occurred at the Okaloosa Island 
Fire ..."
http://www.iaff.org/safe/health/alerts/alert07.html


Cortland KA5S


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