Lithium battery fire in Boeing Dreamliner while empty on Boston tarmac - not a problem?

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Fri, 01/11/2013 - 23:07.

 When I heard that the Boeing 787 had filled with smoke, and that the source had been a short circuited/over heated/ lithium ion battery pack in the underbelly, the first though I had was ValueJET Everglades crash....

In the Value Jet crash 110 people went head first into the Everglades because chemical oxygen generators (small metal cans), improperly shipped on the plane, had gone off and overheated tires which ignited in the hold.   

This Boston battery fire, I believe, is a very serious safety issue with the 787.  Cracked windshield, ok, overfilled fuel tanks spritzing onto the runway, ok.  But no battery fires. 

If the Boston plane was in the air when the batteries shorted, overheated, whatever and the plane filled with fumes - wouldn't been pretty.  

Everglades, probably.

Transportation Department: rip these planes apart and check everything - including visiting the sub assembly factories (overseas?)- and bill Boeing. 

 

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Battery's on 787 show up as a problem again...

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 23:33.

 

From Reuters:

 "At a news conference - where ANA's vice-president Osamu Shinobe bowed deeply in apology - the carrier said instruments on the flight indicated a battery error, triggering emergency warnings to the pilots. It said the battery in the forward cargo hold was the same type as one involved in a fire on another Dreamliner at a U.S. airport last week.

"There was a battery alert in the cockpit and there was an odd smell detected in the cockpit and cabin, and (the pilot) decided to make an emergency landing," Shinobe said.

 

Marc Birtel, a Boeing spokesman, told Reuters: "We've seen the reports, we're aware of the events and are working with our customer.""

i think the battries in the planes are being effected by the sun

Submitted by Quest-News-Serv... on Wed, 01/16/2013 - 20:02.

i think the battries in the planes are being effected by the sun expoding effecting any thing electric - like way over charge energy - as the transformers explode on the poles etc. - which will cause car battries etc. to do the same at some point - and humans and all other species also - as we are electrical energy - human battries - robats

 

sophia honey yoga and guy -

Solar flare magnetic radiation & Dreamliner battery

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Wed, 01/16/2013 - 20:15.

 The short/smoke/circuit in the Boeing 787 battery in Boston showed up immediately after landing.  

Guy has an asute observation here: could the Boeing Dreamliners electonic systems be scrambled and out of safe voltage range because of solar flares which are very active right now?

A scenario which needs to be looked at...you can read about the 1989 solar storm that knocked out Quebec's power grid here on wikipedia.

Here is a description of the lithium batteries on BBC

Here is a CNN pc re: further description of the lithium ion battery used by Boeing, and how the battery differs from a NiMH battery.

Why did lithium battery problem show up now in Boeing 787?

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Thu, 01/17/2013 - 20:08.

 The 787 has been commercially flying for a little more than a year - the first commercial flight was in October, 2011 according to wikipedia.   

That suggests that either a change in environment (ie the solar flare energy - external condition change) or a change in the batteries or charging or controls - has been made to the specific planes which had the battery problems.   

Why has the plane been airborne for a year and now the problems are showing up? 

 

What if 787 batteries were charged too fast with enviro static?

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Sat, 01/26/2013 - 19:08.

 Could the time of year (January, cold, dry air)  when the two battery episodes took place - be a factor in their failure?

Could the carbon fiber hull of the aircraft be a huge static electricity charger when the plane  flies through sub zero dry air?

Could the batteries be grounded to the hull (or not grounded to the hull) creating a false voltage value on the charging regulator because of a voltage potential discrepancy between the hull and the charging system? 

We can assume that when the Boeing 787 lithium ion/cobalt batteries were tested and shaken down by Securaplane in Arizona - the batteries were not being testing in flight at 35,000 feet and 60 below zero farenheit.    

Are we seeing an environmental influence on the batteries?  That environment being a super cold, super dry atmosphere going by at 570mph? or , as Guy Black suggested, incoming solar radiation in the upper atmosphere - which is picked up by the plane? 

If it is any environmental cause that the batteries went critical - forensic investigation of the batteries and all the rest of the on board equipment (charger & controllers) will not reveal the problem. 

Boeing is the biggest US exporter? What about Boeing's imports?

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Fri, 01/25/2013 - 20:49.

 

 

The schematic image above is from the Daily Mail.   

The best visuals of the 787 battery meltdown and Boeing overview I have seen can be found in good reporting here at the Daily Mail. 

 

Elon Musk suggests 787 battery cell spacing geometry too tight

Submitted by Jeff Buster on Thu, 01/31/2013 - 10:49.

 Mr. Musk, the SpaceX fellow, reasonably suggests that the lithium ion cobalt cells in the 787 Boeing lithium battery are needlessly close together - allowing one over heated cell to cascade energy into the adjacent cells leading to a run a way failure - read the report here on Flightglobal.com.   

But the 787 battery cells have been in their tight together arrangment for a year of flights - why the failures now?