Plane fire shows battery risk

Lithium units hold more energy, are harder to extinguish

Special-operations vehicles surround a Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner jet parked at a gate at Logan International Airport in Boston last week after a fire aboard the passenger jet caused “severe damage” to a battery unit.

Special-operations vehicles surround a Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner jet parked at a gate at Logan International Airport in Boston last week after a fire aboard the passenger jet caused “severe damage” to a battery unit.

Monday, January 14, 2013

— When firefighters at Boston’s Logan International Airport opened a hatch of a burning Boeing Co. 787 Dreamliner, they encountered a hazard from something almost ubiquitous in modern life: lithium-based batteries.

Lithium-based batteries - power sources for devices ranging from Apple Inc.’s iPad to tools to plug-in cars - hold so much energy and are so flammable that when they ignite, they can be difficult to extinguish as they spew flames and even molten metal, according to U.S. government tests.

Boeing got U.S. regulators’ permission to install lithiumion batteries on the Dreamliner in 2007, three years after passenger airlines were barred from carrying nonrechargeable types as cargo. U.S. officials investigating the Jan. 7 fire will examine whether the 787 batteries met the government’s conditions, said Michael Barr, an instructor at the University of Southern California’s Aviation Safety and Security Program.

“We know that batteries burn,” Barr said. “We know that lithium batteries have a higher propensity to burn. Is there a basic design issue?”

The review of the fire on the jet probably will also examine whether the 2007 decision provided adequate safety, Barr said.

Boeing installed multiple circuits to ensure that the plane’s power system won’t overcharge the batteries, which can cause them to heat up and burn, Mike Sinnett, the 787 chief project engineer, said in a briefing.

“We put a lot of system protections in place to ensure that failures of the battery don’t put the airplane at risk,” Sinnett said.

The Jan. 7 fire occurred after passengers who had flown from Tokyo left the plane, according to a release from the National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. agency that investigates aviation accidents.

A rechargeable battery used to start the auxiliary power unit, a small turbine engine that generates electricity on the ground, ignited, according to the safety board. It took fire crews 40 minutes to extinguish the fire, the safety board said.

GS Yuasa Corp. of Kyoto, Japan, made the battery pack on the 787, Tsutomu Nishijima, a company spokesman, said. The firm sells them to Thales SA, which then supplies them to Boeing, Nishijima said.

While battery fires are rare, they have been linked to aviation accidents, electric-vehicle blazes and exploding smart phones.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has logged 33 instances in which batteries have caught fire on commercial airplanes since 2009. Of those cases, 26, or 79 percent, involved lithium batteries, according to the agency.

Three cargo jets have been destroyed in fires since 2006 in which lithium batteries were present, according to the safety board. The United Nations’ International Civil Aviation Organization on Jan. 1 imposed new rules on air shipments of lithium batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries used to power electric cars also have been examined by U.S. safety regulators.

In 2011, a General Motors Co. Chevrolet Volt caught fire three weeks after a government crash test, spurring a congressional hearing. GM agreed to fortify the plug-in hybrid’s battery packs so they wouldn’t ignite if cracked in an accident.

In May, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration joined an investigation in Texas of a garage fire that destroyed a Fisker Automotive Inc. Karma, a $103,000 plug-in car.

Lithium-ion batteries are safe as long as they are manufactured and used according to regulatory standards, George Kerchner, executive director of the Washington based Rechargeable Battery Association trade group, said in an e-mail statement.

“Billions of lithium-ion cells and batteries are safely used in hundreds of consumer, military, medical and electric vehicle applications every year,” Kerchner said.

Lithium batteries contain more stored electricity and have a longer life than comparably sized batteries made with other materials.

“Lithium-ion batteries have so many advantages,” said Hans Weber, who runs San Diego-based aviation consultant Tecop International Inc. “They’re the future, no doubt about it.”

Their power also makes them more likely than other battery types to create heat and sparks if they short circuit, and fires are difficult to extinguish because the chemicals are flammable and contain oxygen, Sinnett said. Fire extinguishers that snuff out most blazes don’t work as well on lithium, he said.

Just as the safety board and aviation administration are keeping a close watch on how the battery could have ignited in the Boeing plane, fire-prevention experts are trying to develop techniques for dousing battery blazes and for storing the units safely, said Kathleen Almand, executive director of the Fire Protection Research Foundation in Quincy, Mass.

The growth in battery use has led to more fires and greater interest in how to handle them safely, Almand said. Her foundation is part of the National Fire Protection Association, a nonprofit group that promotes fire safety.

The foundation has studied how to safely store large quantities of batteries in warehouses and how firefighters can attack fires in electric vehicles, she said.

“There is a learning curve whenever you implement a new state of-the-art-technology,” said Jerry Back, senior fire-protection engineer at Baltimore-based Hughes Associates Inc. “It just happens that this is used in everyday life.” Information for this report was provided by Angela Greiling Keane and Chris Cooper of Bloomberg News.

Business, Pages 19 on 01/14/2013