Now I understand the reason for proper battery disposal

[SlugSlinger]

Holy crap @SlugSlinger ! You OK?!?!??!

Yeah, fine. May have got a little lucky with this experiment. The torch did get a cardboard box a little but nothing major. There was a lot of smoke. I ventilated the shop and it still stinks.
Edit- I can say this, I won’t be dismantling another one of these.

 

[GeneW]

That's what happens when you inconvenience a bunch of electrons. They get a bit pissy.

Same thing happened to me about 5 years ago. It was impressive!

 

[Shadowrider]

Lithium batteries are not something to trifle with.

Lots of information here.

ETA: I was actually looking for a link I read awhile back on how much water it took to put out a fully enveloped car fire vs. one of the new EV vehicle fires. It was a real eye opener. Something along the lines of 5000 gallons vs 100,000 gallons or some ridiculous crazy number like that. I found the above link that explains why that is and how it's actually dangerous to use water to put them out. It creates hydrogen gas when the water contacts the electrolyte. I think that a few car fires should wake up some of the green crowd. Maybe...When their house burns down and takes half the block with it from the LI battery bank going runaway on them it might.

 

[JEVapa]

Yep - I had a medium-sized, swollen LIPO battery that I decided to puncture and soak in water before tossing in the trash. Bad idea. Thankfully, I was in the garage and quickly got it to the driveway with a shovel. I had a good fire / fog going in the driveway. Batteries plus now gets those damn things.

Lithium likes to burn really hot and it likes to burn even more when it gets water on it. It also like to explode and burn when it gets shot as well.

 

[StitchJones]

Uhh, yep, I've seen me do something similar.

 

[HiredHand]

Lithium batteries are not something to trifle with.

Lots of information here.

ETA: I was actually looking for a link I read awhile back on how much water it took to put out a fully enveloped car fire vs. one of the new EV vehicle fires. It was a real eye opener. Something along the lines of 5000 gallons vs 100,000 gallons or some ridiculous crazy number like that. I found the above link that explains why that is and how it's actually dangerous to use water to put them out. It creates hydrogen gas when the water contacts the electrolyte. I think that a few car fires should wake up some of the green crowd. Maybe...When their house burns down and takes half the block with it from the LI battery bank going runaway on them it might.

I’ve got a friend that’s worked in the petroleum dispensing industry and is familiar with fire codes. He was just talking with a friend about the dangers of putting out EV auto fires. New equipment and methods of fire extinguishing are being developed to fight those types of fires.

 

[emapples]

Thought it was a good idea to dismantle a big Milwaukee M18 battery. As I was taking it apart it shorted out and became a flame thrower. Luckily I got it outside before any major damage was done.

View attachment 243132

Did it look like a small version of this ?

https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2019/04/22/tesla-fire-parking-garage-investigation-vpx.cnn

 

[sherrick13]

 

[SlugSlinger]

Did it look like a small version of this ?

https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2019/04/22/tesla-fire-parking-garage-investigation-vpx.cnn

Pretty close. It was rather violent with no preliminary smoke at first, the smoke was after it started burning.

 

[Gunbuffer]

A small amount of Lithium can cause a big heat generating reaction

You don’t say