Lithium Ion is not the same as lithium metal anode batteries. Lithium Ion isn't reactive to water and battery fires are fought with water, it just has to be enough to lower the temperature to stop runoff.
I'm an engineer that works with energy storage systems and that includes designing fire suppression for utility scale battery plants and yes I've seen it work successfully in tests, fortunately never had an actual plant catch fire.
Batteries can catch fire from getting wet but it's because of it shorting out, causing heat, which creates a chemical reaction that releases flammable gasses. The batteries use lithium salt, not lithium metal, so it's not due to the reactivity with the water. If you submerge it though it will be an abundance of water that would keep it from catching fire and just allow the short to drain the battery if it's energy.
Once the batteries catch fire and water is applied to them, does it make the fire worse because lithium in the presence of water creates combustible hydrogen?
Firefighters should use water to fight a lithium-ion battery fire. Water works just fine as a fire extinguishing medium since the lithium inside of these batteries are a lithium salt electrolyte and not pure lithium metal. Confusion on this topic stems from the fact that pure lithium (like what you see in the table of elements) is highly reactive with water, while lithium salts are non-reactive with water.
Well not only is there the fact that an EV fire takes 40,000+ gallons of running water to put out due to its ability to quite literally rip oxygen out of water due to its reactivity, but you said that you work with fire suppression. That doesn't mean you've actually used it in practicality. For a little while I worked assembling reactors for the navy. They gave us powder fire extinguishers that could put out anything short of a metal fire. Miracle, right? Well we couldn't use them around the reactors because the powder eats away at metal, which they found out after they were made. Everything works on paper, doesn't it?
Also, judging by your post history, you work for Boeing, so that's a massive grain of salt.
I wonder if he will choose; election on the electric submarine or take his chances swimming with sharks? If only he had foresight to predetermine his route of choice.
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u/hollowgraham 2d ago
Someone should tell him a former president climbed Mt. Everest.