Tough love for the industry's lithium addiction

[michael-fisch]

It's a great idea!

Since we are going to ban lithium ion batteries I guess we'll need very long phone lines to the boats since every cellular phone made in the last 15 years uses lithium ion or lithium polimer (even more dangerous) batteries. No more laptops or emergency marine radios on the dive boats either. I think that the life vests with the blinky lights use lithium batteries too, and know that the EPIRBs do.

This is the 21th century and it is not possible to turn the clock back a few hundred years unless you are willing to live like the Amish.

Michael

 

[Ministryofgiraffes]

Lithium battery charging hasn’t been allowed in any passenger compartment of any liveaboard I have been on..just as an FYI.

 

[Ministryofgiraffes]

A decade ago when doing some canister lights for my last gig, I choose to do ni cad as they were safer for application and the size increase to get same burn time as lithium was nothing in actual use than anyone would notice. They sold like crap because everyone was on the lithium bandwagon.

Here we are a decade later and the large capacity lithium can, video lights etc are much cheaper, especially Chinese ones and frankly the quality is all over the place in an alarming way. Not just the poor quality cells, construction of packs but also amazingly cheap chargers that put fast over sane safety.

I recently switched my own video lights to lights that use single cells that I charge individually over the packs on a slow and smart charger. I still don't charge them unattended but sure feel better as I know what quality individual batteries

Which lights did you switch ‘from’ and ‘to’?

 

[VE7DAC]

Lithium battery charging hasn’t been allowed in any passenger compartment of any liveaboard I have been on..just as an FYI.

So they banned all cell phones, laptops, tablets, and wireless headphones from the cabins? I find that hard to believe.

 

[Wookie]

So they banned all cell phones, laptops, tablets, and wireless headphones from the cabins? I find that hard to believe.

We did on my liveaboard by not putting any outlets in the cabin. Believe it. We had one down below, which was for CPAP users, and if I found anything else plugged into it, I took it away for the rest of the trip. There were places to plug in in the galley where the crew was 24/7.

 

[Ministryofgiraffes]

So they banned all cell phones, laptops, tablets, and wireless headphones from the cabins? I find that hard to believe.

I don’t think that’s what I said...I said they banned all charging of lithium batteries.

 

[VE7DAC]

I don’t think that’s what I said...I said they banned all charging of lithium batteries.

All the devices I listed are powered by lithium ion batteries.

 

[VE7DAC]

We did on my liveaboard by not putting any outlets in the cabin. Believe it. We had one down below, which was for CPAP users, and if I found anything else plugged into it, I took it away for the rest of the trip. There were places to plug in in the galley where the crew was 24/7.

On your boat, you're certainly entitled to enforce your own rules, but that one is a tremendous overreaction.

I work in life safety. Specifically fire safety. Including fire prevention, detection, and extinguishing systems on ships and boats. I operate under regulations laid out by the International Maritime Organization, American Bureau of Shipping, and others.

Any vessel that is at serious risk from a consumer battery in a cabin space is not a safe boat. Period. You can try to justify it any way you please, but no major vessel operator prohibits the use of lithium or lithium ion batteries anywhere except in ammunition storage lockers.

A consumer level battery (barring anything extreme like a DPV) simply doesn't contain enough energy to damage a well constructed vessel in the time it takes the crew to respond to a fire. In an actual incident, it's no worse than any other small fire caused by an electrical issue, cigarette, or shorted non-lithium battery.

If you can't safely deal with a small fire on your boat, you aren't operating a safe boat. If you think you need to ban batteries from passenger cabins to keep people safe, you aren't doing enough to keep them safe in the first place.

 

[cerich]

On your boat, you're certainly entitled to enforce your own rules, but that one is a tremendous overreaction.

I work in life safety. Specifically fire safety. Including fire prevention, detection, and extinguishing systems on ships and boats. I operate under regulations laid out by the International Maritime Organization, American Bureau of Shipping, and others.

Any vessel that is at serious risk from a consumer battery in a cabin space is not a safe boat. Period. You can try to justify it any way you please, but no major vessel operator prohibits the use of lithium or lithium ion batteries anywhere except in ammunition storage lockers.

A consumer level battery (barring anything extreme like a DPV) simply doesn't contain enough energy to damage a well constructed vessel in the time it takes the crew to respond to a fire. In an actual incident, it's no worse than any other small fire caused by an electrical issue, cigarette, or shorted non-lithium battery.

If you can't safely deal with a small fire on your boat, you aren't operating a safe boat. If you think you need to ban batteries from passenger cabins to keep people safe, you aren't doing enough to keep them safe in the first place.

Wow.

I disagree with the premise that a consumer Lithium powered device that has a thermal runaway doesn't have enough energy to start a major fire. It ignites something like bedding, bunk curtains etc and it will spread quickly. A lithium powered consumer device fire is NOT at all as easy to put out as a cigarette, nor an electrical issue (depending on access) nor a non lithium battery. The chemistry, how they burn and what temperature is quite different, as are the suppressants that will effectively work.

To your "If you can't safely deal with a small fire on your boat, you aren't operating a safe boat" tells me that while you may have academic knowledge and some certifications , you don't have much beyond that, the speed that small can get large is staggering often, and depends on many, many factors. Your blanket statement is naive at best.

 

[tbone1004]

of note, and I'm sure it was brought up, there is actually a dedicated class of fire extinguishers for lithium fires. Fun fact....