Short Circuits and Thermal Runaway involved in Boeing Fire
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board chairman, Deborah Hersman, said yesterday that the battery that recently caught fire on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner in Boston showed signs of short circuiting and a phenomenon called thermal runaway.
The specific lithium ion battery chemistry used in the airplane—lithium cobalt oxide—is particularly prone to thermal runaway, in which heat in a battery triggers more heating until it catches fire (see “Grounded Boeing 787 Dreamliners Use Batteries Prone to Overheating”). Thermal runaway can be triggered by a short circuit between the electrodes in a battery. The NTSB said that it is not clear why safeguards put into place to stop thermal runaway didn’t work.
Short circuits can be the result of damage to the battery or manufacturing defects that pierce a polymer barrier between electrodes in lithium ion batteries (see the structure of a “Lithium-Ion Battery”). Metal particles from a defective manufacturing process led to overheating in Apple and Dell products several years ago, resulting in massive recalls (see “Lithium-Ion Batteries That Don’t Explode”).
Boeing says it can’t comment directly on the investigation or its choice of battery chemistries. While lithium cobalt oxide isn’t the safest chemistry, it’s one the industry has long experience with, and it stores more energy than safer chemistries.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.
And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.
How scientists traced a mysterious covid case back to six toilets
When wastewater surveillance turns into a hunt for a single infected individual, the ethics get tricky.
The problem with plug-in hybrids? Their drivers.
Plug-in hybrids are often sold as a transition to EVs, but new data from Europe shows we’re still underestimating the emissions they produce.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.