Close call at work

[PhotonWrangler]

We had a team of workers in the other week that were doing a job which required lots and lots of Li-on brick-style clip-on batteries. The batteries and chargers were all kept on a rolling cart.

Apparently someone had stacked the batteries together while they were charging. Bad idea for two reasons -

1) Batteries get warm while charging and need ventilation.
2) Batteries expand a little bit when they get warm and they need room to allow for this expansion so their innards don't get squished and short out.

Eventually one of the batteries started to smolder quite a bit, just short of bursting into open flames. This caused the entire job to be shut down for several hours while their safety team went through every single battery, charger and cable with a fine toothed comb. They lost almost a half day of work because of this.

Fortunately it was caught in time before any real damage or injury occurred.

 

[chillinn]

Disaster narrowly averted. I'm glad you made it and no one was injured or worse.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Thanks Chillinn. I wasn't in the vicinity of the event when it happened, but when I walked over there to check it out I could immediately smell it. Even with good ventilation it took a few hours for the odor to dissipate. I'm so glad that no one was injured.