Fire Extinguishers & Fire Blankets

Fire Extinguishers for Lithium Batteries

Fire Queen Limited can supply fire extinguishers for tackling Lithium-Ion battery fires.  These high performance Lith-Ex fire extinguishers contain AVD (Aqueous Vermiculite Dispersion) compound – a revolutionary fire extinguishing agent – & are designed to target high risk fires of a limited size.  They are suited to confined spaces such as homes, hotel rooms, vehicles, public transport, aviation, marine or leisure & dedicated processes where in all instances fires need to be suppressed in their infancy before developing into a fully established fire.

How it works:

When a lithium-ion cell goes into thermal runaway (increase in temperature) there are multiple possible sources of heat; for example:

• Combustion – burning of electrolyte, packaging etc.
• Ohmic – resistive heating caused by high current flow through short circuits
• Thermodynamic – if the electrodes are no longer isolated, then the system will revert to its lowest energy state for that temperature, as long as the activation energy is met
• Chemical – reaction of the electrode material with other components of the battery (electrolyte), thermal decomposition of the metal oxide electrode, especially cobalt oxide

In addition to this multitude of mechanisms, the design of the cell often prevents direct access of the extinguishing agent to the source of the fire, making it is difficult to extinguish the fire.