Oh yeah, Lee Iaccoca must be spinning in his grave at 2,000 RPM!
I know this is tongue-in-cheek, and the words “steam explosion” came noisomely to mind almost immediately, but it is true that water is the most effective ‘normal’ method to abstract heat from the battery, and excessive-heat effects are what will have led to a battery fire in most cases.
The current fire-department dodge in Tesla fires appears to be to tip the car on its side and play hoses on the bottom until the stranded-charge effects cease. As I noted some time ago, Tesla and other manufacturers are going to have to provide some sort of test arrangement or architecture for first responders to verify fill discharge of all cells before departing, or allowing transport of the vehicle – this is not rocket science, but requires good detail design and implementation at a (nominally) higher cost.
The correct thing to do in the locomotive case is probably to make the ventilation system for the battery – which will be of considerable cooling capacity and rate on a properly-designed locomotive – more watertight, and arrange spray nozzles in this space connected to pressurized water, perhaps even using a booster pump arrangement. This would flash water to steam with greatest efficiency, carrying away the maximum heat in the (lavish) steam analogous to how misters in garden restaurants reduce air temperature. (That at any rate is the approach I anticipate using for this concern… derived by analogy to the Reid-Ramsay turbine’s condenser arrangement, but better oprimized)
Just remember this: The fastest car sold in America is a Consulier, a specialized racing vehicle. The second-fastest has four doors and rear seat heaters.
And the electric drive – actually being sold as a retrofit package for older cars by Ford! – sure beats the heck out of ANY six-cylinder Mustang ever sold, and there were many, many of those.
The box Birds didn’t last long; they were a product of the same miscalculation that led to the Edsel division. But what persisted was four-seat Birds, and my '62 was a particularly useful example of the formula: if you wanted the two-seater vibe, you put the tonneau cover on, and the engine under the hood was a 390 FE with a 650 double-pumper… with four perfectly symmetrical venturis… which was easily good for 130mph, far beyond what either the damping or the tires were really good for. And if you put the girl in the middle of the back seat, her long blonde hair would blow straight forward at 80mph, at which speed the loudest sound was the patter of the tires on the road, and you could identify all four of them. That is not a ‘sports car’ but it was certainly as fun as one in a different set of ways.
It does remain to be seen whether Ford understands how to do ludicrous+ speed, but it is certainly an aftermarket probability… at least until the street-racing community discovers the possibilities.
I love the “Bullet Birds” built from 61 to 63. I drove one but it wasn’t mine. I wanted one badly until the Mustang came out. it was Iacocca’s singular work of genius as there never was a car like it before. My all time favourite Mustang was the 66 Fastback I saw at a car show. 6 cylinder, 3 speed with overdrive and old-school Cragars. The guy said it got 27 MPG. All of the chassis plates were in German and it had a metric speedometer. Made to be rented in Germany by Hertz. Almsot a captive market with all the American soldiers stationed over there back then. “Payday! Let’s rent one of those new Mustangs!”
Part of the battery is the amount of energy (Kilowatts) stored in them. A fault is like a short circuit with NO fuse or circuit breaker to stop the flow of energy to the short. An analogy is an electric welder gone wild. It is going to be interesting to see who comes up with a good safe way to b.uild them. I wonder if any Prius’s have caught fire since the 2018 recall. Google did not show me any
OM, are you talking about a battery safety system or the emergency core cooling system for a nuclear power reactor??
Methinks that for a battery locomotive, it would behoove the designers to be especially generous with the fluid capacity of the battery’s thermal management system. As you poited out, boiling the water would absorb a lot of heat.
If we think a runaway diesel is bad - it doesn’t hold a candle to a runaway battery, especially a battery big enough to power a locomotive.
One source details how LI batteries will fail from excessive heat. But apparently, the issue is not heat directly related to pulling too much load. I think that preventing that cause would be relatively easy by using an overload protection cutout.
However the listed source of causes for excess heat does not include pulling excess load. Instead, it only includes these causes, all related to other abnormalities including manufacturing and design flaws or poor quality control.
It sounds like the reason this problem exists is that it is exceptionally hard to solve. And the only comfort comes from the fact that it is relatively rare.
LIST OF CAUSES:
A. Manufacturing Defects
B. Design Flaws
C. Abnormal or Improper Usage
It would be interesting to know whether such batteries have “short time ratings,” like locomotives. I’d hate to be in a traffic situation which called for “punching it” only to have the car say" nope - overload…
I saw a documentary on Li-ION batteries. Under some circumstances the electrolite can start to crystalize, forming long chains that can bridge the gap, short out causing immediate discharge and run-away heat. They had a potential fix, but as I remember it would take quite a redesign change.
As I recall the Apollo program required a major redesign for safety.
I’m quite aware of how intense a Li-ion fire can be, which why the comparison with an ECCS was only half in jest. With the chain reaction stopped by a scram, the reactor is still producing 6% of the power from decay heat.
Progress is being made, as laptop and cell phone battery fires were a problem back in the aughties. This is the main reason why the FAA limits laptop batteries to 100 watt-hrs.
If anyone has any questions about how bad a Li/ion battery fire could be in a locomotive just ask the city of Morris IL. They had what could have been considered the equivilent of one a couple years ago. 25 Tons of batteries going up at once. It took dumping concrete in powder to get it out and over a week before people could get home. Now just imagine that happening in say Chicago or LA and the fire spreads to other locomotives and or cars loaded with hazmat. Lord help the first responders and Legal for the Railroad better be on speed dial as they are going to be needed in a hurry.