Airline pilots’ physique calls consideration to lithium battery hearth threat | Defined

A technician solders the wires of a lithium-ion battery. Restore module of Li-ion battery. Engineer hand holds soldering iron and tin-lead to solder digital board.
| Photograph Credit score: Fahroni

The story up to now: On January 2, the Worldwide Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations (IFALPA) issued three place papers on the fireplace threat because of using lithium-ion batteries in airport and plane settings. The papers are motivated by air operators’ rising use of electrical automobiles (EVs) and lithium-ion batteries as they work in direction of their carbon neutrality commitments in addition to the batteries turning into extra energy-dense.

What’s IFALPA?

IFALPA is a worldwide nonprofit representing the worldwide neighborhood {of professional} pilots. After World Battle II, the United Nations established the Worldwide Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in 1947 to coordinate air transport and its ideas worldwide.

A yr later, ICAO organised a convention in London the place pilots might work together with its leaders. IFALPA was born at this occasion with 13 pilots’ associations. In line with a supply on the ICAO web site, IFALPA encompassed 104 member associations representing one lakh skilled pilots worldwide round 2013.

Per the identical supply, “The assumption [is] that the distinctive perspective of pilots working in scheduled flying can be of great profit to the creation and adaptation of ICAO Requirements and Advisable Practices (SARPs) by which ICAO regulates worldwide civil aviation.” IFALPA additionally supplies inputs to the Worldwide Air Transport Affiliation (IATA), the Airports Council Worldwide, and the Worldwide Federation of Air Site visitors Controllers’ Affiliation.

Why the issues about lithium batteries?

Virtually each main business on the planet is mechanised to a major diploma, and the power for these machines has historically been produced by burning fossil fuels. As local weather mitigation has grow to be extra urgent, industries are beneath strain to interchange this thermal power — the principal trigger of worldwide warming — with electrical power.

For instance, EVs draw electrical power from a battery to drive an electrical motor and provide kinetic power to the wheels. In an inside combustion engine, warmth power launched by burning fossil fuels strikes pistons, whose movement is transformed to rotary movement of the wheels.

Lithium-ion batteries have emerged as a preferred resolution to storing electrical power as a result of they’re energy-dense, rechargeable, and might be made in virtually any form, which is helpful when there are house constraints as onboard an plane. However lithium-ion batteries have been recognized to catch hearth when they’re subjected to sure bodily stresses.

The hearth is the results of the stress making a short-circuit contained in the battery, leaving it to maintain producing electrical present, warmth, and oxygen – an occasion known as thermal runaway. The battery’s inside elements can grow to be corroded whereas the danger of catching hearth will increase. The quick circuit might be the results of mechanical, electrical, and/or thermal abuse, which respectively deform the inner construction, degrade its electrical efficiency, and trigger warmth to build up.

A January 2024 IFALPA place paper mentioned “cooling a reacting private digital machine with giant quantities of non-alcoholic liquid has been demonstrated to be very efficient in controlling the propagation of the thermal runaway.”

Extra just lately, after Hurricane Helene struck the US in November 2024, 48 lithium-ion batteries reportedly caught hearth. College of South Carolina mechanical engineer Xinyu Huang mentioned they might have been the results of EV batteries hardly ever being rated to be waterproof after they’re sitting in salt water for greater than half-hour. Such conditions usually tend to happen throughout flooding, which is turning into extra widespread because of local weather change and poor city planning.

What do the IFALPA papers say?

The three place papers are numbered POS01, POS02, and POS03. POS02 and POS03 are extra normal whereas POS01 is extra particular.

POS02 is motivated by the totally different sort of fires attributable to lithium-ion batteries (in comparison with inside combustion engines). As Mr. Huang wrote, “When a lithium-ion battery pack bursts into flames, it releases poisonous fumes, burns violently and is extraordinarily exhausting to place out. Ceaselessly, firefighters’ solely possibility is to let it burn out by itself.” The place paper thus asks “airports, rescue and fire-fighting providers, operators, and floor service suppliers” to accumulate or develop purpose-built fire-safety tools and protocols.

POS03 extends these issues to the flight deck – the world colloquially known as the “cockpit” in civilian plane – the place the batteries could also be current in elements required to function the plane. It additionally calls consideration to research by the US Federal Aviation Administration and the European Union Aviation Security Company discovering that current hearth kits couldn’t reply adequately to fires of lithium-ion batteries with an power score of 100 Wh or larger.

POS01 is worried with the protected transport of lithium-ion batteries, particularly UN laws 3480 and 3481. Because the UN classifies these batteries as “miscellaneous harmful items”, the laws specify the packaging and labelling requirements required to move them by air. UN3480 applies to lithium-ion batteries transported in bulk and UN3481 to lithium-ion batteries match inside some tools that’s being transported in bulk.

One distinction between the 2 laws is that UN3480 requires the batteries to be charged to lower than 30%, a.okay.a. state of cost (SOC) 30%, whereas UN3481 doesn’t. POS01 contends that UN3481 didn’t undertake this restriction as a result of it assumed producers would set up safeguards within the tools to stop a fireplace from one battery spreading to others. However because the power density of batteries and the variety of settings by which they’re in use is rising and the dimensions of the tools that makes use of them is shrinking, IFALPA’s place is that the SOC 30% restrict needs to be prolonged to UN3481 as nicely.