Burning li-ion cells are an electrical fire, a chemical fire and metal fire, so you need a class D fire extinguisher.
Burning lithium primarys are a nightmare to extinguish.
Just keep a big bucket of sand nearby to dump on them.
Er...they produce their own oxygen...
Scrap that idea. Gosh dang. I can see why they'd be wanting to limit air-transport with these buggers.
They don't actually produce their own oxygen but gaseous lithium is an extremely powerful reducing agent and can grab chemically bound oxygen from a lot of things. Like wood, paper, human flesh, stuff like that.
It isn't as bad as really nasty stuff like chlorine trifluoride that can burn wet sand.
Dumping dry sand on it will help to cool it - fires need heat, fuel and an oxidiser. If you keep it from finding any more fuel then you just have to worry about the hot hydrogen fluoride emissions. That will burn most things, but won't burn sand. It is, however a rather vile substance best avoided. It does really ghastly things to lungs.
CR123's scare me more than the 18650 rechargeables. When you go through the thread I mentioned above, most issues seem to happen with cheap (read the non-USA produced) CR123's.
In addition to that, the problems be a heavily-weighted toward Pelican and Surefire flashlights! Rarely to you see the problem, at least documented, with budget lights. I have a Pelican M6 that runs on 2xCR123, and it is my primary concern.
Thats cuz the Surefire collections on CPF are huge. Like, upwards of 40. A person.
Lets not forget , most of these instances were caused by user error ..
Batteries do not just flame for no reason , if a battery is getting old , unstable , then there usually is plenty of warning [ single cell use ]
Its important to remember to monitor the cells [ multi cell use ] , monitor out of the charger , into the light , and out of the light .
A multi meter is almost a must for multi cell users , you dont drive a car with your eyes shut do you ? [ ok some people do ]
Still , a little respect will go a long way ... and a MM even further towards avoiding troubles ...
I do watch my batteries closely when charging,That will burn most things, but won't burn sand.
I’m a relative noob, And also relatively(?) paranoid about my 18650s.
I have a charger that has left every battery charged at 4.20V. When charging, I’ll check every 15 mins for the ‘green light’ that charging has completed.
And I’ll check the voltage on the battery in the torch after use, and I also happen to charge them in an unused tile bathroom. Burn - I don’t care - XD.
But seriously, I have a Li-Ion battery less than 2 feet from my face as I type this on my laptop. Oh, and there’s the old Li-Ion laptop battery that I replaced that is sitting 5 feet away from me right now.
But, I also hold the Li-Ion in my phone against my ear every day, and my shaver to my throat every day.
I get the feeling I’m way over watchful on the 18650s, and way complacent on all the other Li-Ions that might blow me up!
This is why we know that Li-ions are generally safe. There are after all billions of people with one in the pocket all day long without a second thought, you hear horror stories occasionally...but it's probably lightning strike probability.
I suppose the diffrence is that laptops and phones (...etc) have a known charge and discharge rate and the batteries can be matched to that, where as in a flashlight we're using the batteries outside their origonal purpose.
Better safe than sorry...just don't get obsessed with it.
You can't compare battery packs in laptops to loose li-ion cells for flashlights.
The battery packs have protection circuits, chargers and li-ion cells that are designed, manufactured and tested together and a big company are guaranteeing the functionality and safety.A random cell of unknown origin with a random protection circuit, charged with a random charger then put in a random flashlight, all bets are off and there is no company staking their reputation on that this particular combination is safe.
As was shown a few years ago just because a big name company puts it's name on a laptop doesn't mean it's in any way guaranteed to be safe.
They still put in a lot of work to make it as safe as possible and they also recalled all the faulty batteries.
You don't have either with flashlight batteries.
That’s good
Well said, Piers! :-) I think that sums it up just about perfectly.
Exercise some common sense and buy some fire detection and suppression equipment. Heck, it's a good idea to have a decent smoke and/or fire detector and an extinguisher on hand anyway - might as well invest a couple bucks more to get a bunch of interlinked fire detectors (mine are hooked up to the home alarm system and can even automatically trigger a 911 call when you're not home and whatever customizable criteria you have set is met). Make sure you don't have any highly inflammable combustibles nearby. Keep gasoline, LNG, gun powder, chemicals, nuclear weapons, etc. well away from wherever you happen to be charging your batteries. But don't worry too much over some one-in-a-million event killing you. Life is just too short for that.
Just ask Sony about that. And they make very good cells.
Most of the time.
And for many, many other things.
You got it in one!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm too short for a lot of them.
At 5'9" 1.76m
I have the other problem Don, at 6'4" I'm too damn tall for lots of things. I blame part of my back prolems on having to stoop down to use worktops and the like that's just that little bit too low.
I used to share a house with a girl that was just 5foot tall, it made trips to the supermarket very efficient...I'd get the high stuff and she'd get the low :)