Ternary chemistries supply their own oxidizer! There is no "putting it out", once it goes into thermal runaway you are cooked. (Literally) This is why all EV and proper home battery manufacturers encase the cells in a strong secondary envelope with proper venting, this can help prevent it from catching another structure on fire.
As others have said the only thing you can do is try to cool it down, but trust me, by the time you can even get water there the damage will be done, I've seen it first-hand! The amount of heat even a small ternary pack will produce will most definitely set anything within a few arms lengths on fire! My workshop was a 100% steel building, and the area over the fire was hot enough to melt the structure and galvanized roof paneling. (Well North of 1000°C!) This was from one single 18650 in a 14kWh pack failing, and it took almost all the other cells (over 400) with it! All this happened within about 5-10 minutes. All cells popped off well before the fire department arrived! Had this been a wooden structure the whole thing would have been burnt to the slab. Do yourself a favor, and if you are still set on a DIY pack for your home, use LFP only, not only is it much much safer, but it also will last longer for deep cycling that you will likely be doing for home storage. I also recommend putting everything in a steel box even with LFP. -Phil On Tue, Sep 30, 2025 at 4:27 AM Bill Dube via EV <[email protected]> wrote: > I indeed remembered this and I thought about using it as an example. > I suppose that as I age I have a bit more empathy, so I chose to be more > "diplomatic" and not "name names". > > This incident, by the way, is how John Wayland became known as > "Plasma Boy". > > When John finally arrived at the NEDRA event a day (or perhaps two) > late, we all ran up to his blacked car on the trailer wearing sunglasses > and holding burnt hot dogs on sticks. > > Perhaps I have not become more diplomatic in my old age? 😛 > > Bill D. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20250930/32bfbf45/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ Address messages to [email protected] No other addresses in TO and CC fields HELP: http://www.evdl.org/help/
