Woman Injured When Laptop Computer Explodes

http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2014/06/30/bucks-county-woman-injured-when-laptop-computer-explodes/

...The laptop exploded, the woman's shirt caught fire and she was burned on the face, arms, foot and chest. Farry says the evidence has been collected, but it appears the battery pack inside the computer went off like a bomb, sending debris six to eight feet away...


..."The battery pack was on the floor. It was in pieces"...

...And then there were various plastic parts that landed in different areas within her living room"...

Ouch! Would be nice to know if her replacement battery was the "$8 special" from ebay. I'm glad she didn't lose and eye or burn the house down. And just from reading the story, she doesn't sound like the idiot that sued because the MacDonald's coffee was hot...and got burned. (crazy people, serving hot coffee)

Even with an original battery you may not be free from this risk. Just less likely (presumably!). So even if you follow all precautions, an event like this may still happen to you. On the plus side, these events remain rare (as shown by being newsworthy ).

Makes a good case for pulling out a laptop's battery when you're just using it at home. Yeah that does away with the backup power function, but in most places where laptops are used, wall power is reliable enough to make that a non-issue.

Also makes one wonder why laptops don't use pouch cells (in a hard plastic casing). Those would swell, crack their housing and maybe spit out nasty smoke, but not explode in a "big bang & shrapnel" sense.

I love these scare stories.��,The risk must be very small with the amount of Lappies used on a daily basis.

Yeah, I can't really trust cheap cheap batteries, but they're the right price! And if you shop around carefully, you can find good quality that's inexpensive.


As far as Liebeck vs McDonald's, the details are important! The short story is she didn't sue for a ridiculous amount of money. McD refused to settle on sensible terms many times before trial, and also refused to make their coffee a safer temperature (don't even think of drinking coffee hot enough to cause burns requiring skin grafts). The $2.7 million was punitive damages. The jury arrived at that number at the suggestion of the lawyer to use McD's coffee revenue for 1-2 days. McD apparently makes a LOT of money on coffee. In the end they settled for less anyway.

Also with the amount of batteries and coffee floating around, it's good that we don't hear more of these stories - presumably because the really bad things don't happen very often.

DrunkenDonut said:

Also with the amount of batteries and coffee floating around, it's good that we don't hear more of these stories - presumably because the really bad things don't happen very often.

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Yeah either that or they just got bored in the news.

BTW, I'm suing Fiskars becasue these scissors are way too sharp and cut me. They should be a safer sharpness

So what brand are the cells?

John

TinderBox (UK) said:

So what brand are the cells?

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LapOnFire 6000mAh!

From a Google search, apparently one of many China BAK Battery or subsidiary companies. One of the largest battery suppliers, making all kinds of li-ion chemistries, and supplying worldwide.

Any idea of what happened to the batt? Not the first time any company has had battery problems...

mcnair55 said:

I love these scare stories.��,The risk must be very small with the amount of Lappies used on a daily basis.

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My post was not intended to scare anyone. I simply feel that one of the valuable roles that CPF can fulfill is that of a thorough repository of information regarding Li-Ion cells, including fires and explosions.

I think the issue boils down to "Acceptable" (or "Tolerable") Risk. Here is one definition as offered by Fewtrell/Bartram in a document to the World Health Organization in 2001:

A risk is acceptable when it falls below an arbitrary defined probability; it falls below some level that is already tolerated; it falls below an arbitrary defined attributable fraction of the total disease burden in the community; the cost of reducing the risk would exceed the costs saved; the cost of reducing the risk would exceed the cost s saved when the "costs of suffering" are also factored in; the opportunity costs would be better spent on other, more pressing, public health problems; public health professionals say it is acceptable; the general public say it is acceptable (or more likely, do not say it is not); politicians say it is acceptable.

Almost nothing is truly safe. (Perhaps literally "nothing" is safe.) Children can choke to death on Alkaline cells. Risk can never be eliminated entirely, though it can be substantially reduced through application of the hierarchy of controls. (In the case of Li-Ion cells, the "controls" are the common sense safety practices and "good habits" recommended by most experienced members of CPF.)

Residual risk is defined as the remaining risk after controls have been implemented. Each person must determine for themselves whether their residual risk is acceptable for each potentially hazardous activity they choose to undertake.

The battery is a Dell clone with green BAK A06 18650 cells

At the 1 minute mark in the video there is a close-up of the cells. As you can see from the crop below, the cells are marked "BAK A06". BAK is one of the largest Chinese 18650 manufacturers. While they are not as low quality as some of the fly-by-night Chinese manufacturers, they are far from the quality of top-tier manufacturers such as Panasonic. The A06 is possibly a grading. For example, Samsung uses grades A01,A02,A03,A04. The highest grade A01 is reserved for Samsung's products, and the lower grades go to customers. So possibly A06 denotes a very low grade cell (for comparison, I have seen BAK cells marked A03 in an iWalk CMC500 power bank). In any case, almost surely the battery was a replacement (clone) Dell battery pack (the laptop user says she replaced the original battery a few years ago).

Most likely the explosion was due to an internal short in a cell caused by contaminants introduced during manufacturering (reported to be the cause of most serious Li-ion battery accidents). That's the risk you take with Chinese manufacturers with inferior quality control. Another contributing factor is that the laptop is an older model Dell that ran very hot, and probably with an older BIOS that keeps the battery constantly charged to 100%, so yielding the worst possible environment for the cells: high heat and high voltage.

Re: The battery is a Dell clone with green BAK A06 18650 cells

Gauss, thank you for the explanation of the battery grading codes. In light of this it makes sense that an "A06" code is something to avoid like the plague. Unfortunately the customer never sees the innards of the battery pack and has no idea what they're getting.

Low grade LION cells can definitely exhibit a "non passive end of life characteristic." I'm glad to see that her injuries were relatively minor and the fire was contained to a small area.

Re: The battery is a Dell clone with green BAK A06 18650 cells

Gauss163 said:

Another contributing factor is that the laptop is an older model Dell that ran very hot,

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Speculation. Afaik there's a couple of ways to have a laptop run hot:
a) Make it work hard, that is: continuous high CPU and/or disk usage. I sometimes make my laptop sweat. But an elderly woman, Facebooking etc? Prooobably not.
b) Block ventilation slots. That's likely to happen when used on a soft surface like one's bed, carpet, etc. From above video (~0:30 mark, and ~halfway) it seems the lappie was used on a regular desk. So I'd expect ventilation to be normal / as designed.
c) Use it in a place that's hot already... :sweat: (unknown in this case)

and probably with an older BIOS that keeps the battery constantly charged to 100%,

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Annoying indeed. May laptop is also one of those. Pull the battery out at desired charge level & put away. Or, if left in & on AC power, it'll charge to 100%. No user choice, no 'desired charge level' setting of any kind.

so yielding the worst possible environment for the cells: high heat and high voltage.

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True, but afaik those factors cut into a cell's capacity and thus, remaining useful life. Not so much into safety (unless overcharged). :thinking:

Re: The battery is a Dell clone with green BAK A06 18650 cells

RetroTechie said:

b) Block ventilation slots. That's likely to happen when used on a soft surface like one's bed, carpet, etc. From above video (~0:30 mark, and ~halfway) it seems the lappie was used on a regular desk. So I'd expect ventilaticon to be normal / as designed.

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Do they have a pet? I've cleaned cat hair out of the CPU fan on a friend's laptop after it was shutting down from overheating.

Re: The battery is a Dell clone with green BAK A06 18650 cells

The laptop in question might have been powered by a poorly made third party pack. Or it might have been original. Dell's battery pack MSDS show a variety of suppliers from the well known names including Panasonic / Sanyo, Sony but also two pack assemblers where the cells are not identified.

Makers have been turning to cryptographically signed sub-assemblies (like battery packs) with the intent of restricting third parties from horning in on OEM sales, but also to protect the OEM's brand and consumers too.

Unfortunately where opportunity lies, competition will follow, and the third-party market remains alive and well despite battery authentication schemes employing SHA-1 hashed passwords being around since the middle of the last decade (when the laptop in question was likely made).

Would the problem of dangerous third party packs be diminished in scope if OEMs priced their packs such that there was little profit in copying them? It's possible consumers wouldn't be as tempted to look for cheaper alternatives if OEM packs were well priced. Maybe there'd be fewer fakes.

SHA-1 was cracked in 2006/2007 yet it's still in use. Worse, some packs ship with well documented hashes - they may as well not be password protected at all.

See: https://media.blackhat.com/bh-us-11/Miller/BH_US_11_Miller_Battery_Firmware_Public_WP.pdf for a detailed account (published in 2011) of the Macbook Smart Battery system including default passwords used by Apple including keys for the SBS "unseal" command and to obtain Full Access Mode. This particular SBS system makes use of a number of Ti chips.

Macbook batteries ship with a default unseal password (0x36720414). This was found
by reverse engineering a Macbook battery update. On Macbook batteries, the full
access mode password is also hardcoded and default (0xffffffff).

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The information required to replicate the analysis work for other systems is there for all to read and build upon.

Re: The battery is a Dell clone with green BAK A06 18650 cells

Gauss163 said:

Another contributing factor is that the laptop is an older model Dell that ran very hot, and probably with an older BIOS that keeps the battery constantly charged to 100%

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It's not necessarily due to an old BIOS. The feature may exist directly in the OS through the manufacturer's proprietary management software, but has yet to be activated by the user (that's the case with my Thinkpad).

PhotonWrangler said:

"non passive end of life characteristic."

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Nice one :laughing:

Re: The battery is a Dell clone with green BAK A06 18650 cells

If I recall correctly from my days of running Linux and FreeBSD natively on my Lenovo ThinkPad (X220), this model operates the BMS at the machine level not operating system level. Four year old tech. The darn thing is like our old Volvo wagon, it simply refuses to die.

Re: The battery is a Dell clone with green BAK A06 18650 cells

I remember seeing that on the local news!! Langhorne,Pa. is about 45 minutes from me! She is lucky,it could have been worse.

Re: The battery is a Dell clone with green BAK A06 18650 cells

...and an iPhone 5 just a'sploded in a guy's pocket.

Re: The battery is a Dell clone with green BAK A06 18650 cells

PhotonWrangler said:

...and an iPhone 5 just a'sploded in a guy's pocket.

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Crazy! I hope his Attorney is a good one and he gets a few Million,,,,,at least several Hundred Thousand!! Apple can afford it!