Researchers Create A Lithium-Ion Battery With Built-In Flame Retardant (engadget.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Engadget: One big problem with lithium-ion batteries is that they have the tendency to catch fire and blow up all kinds of gadgets like toys and phones. To solve that issue, a group of researchers from Stanford University created lithium-ion batteries with built-in fire extinguishers. They added a component called "triphenyl phosphate" to the plastic fibers of the part that keeps negative and positive electrodes separate. Triphenyl phosphate is a compound commonly used as a flame retardant for various electronics. If the battery's temperature reaches 150 degrees Celsius, the plastic fibers melt and release the chemical. Based on the researchers' tests, the method can stop batteries from burning up within 0.4 seconds.

Comments

Triphenyl phosphate

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a well-known flame retardant. Its environmental effects are not so well known. From Wikipedia:

Limited information is available indicating significant toxicological effects of TPhP. Although it was initially expected to have an overall low impact, a growing body of evidence suggests that the effects may not be so harmless. Triphenyl phosphate exhibits low acute toxicity by dermal or oral contact.[3] However, an increasing number of studies have linked exposure to TPhP with reproductive and developmental toxicity, neurotoxicity, metabolic disruption, endocrine effects, and genotoxicity

Personally, I prefer a random smartphone blazing off a hipster's balls from time to time than a rotten environment and half of humankind with endocrine problems down the line (besides, the first alternative would exert natural selection in a beneficial way).

Car fires

[sjbe]

What makes a battery more hazardous than fuel, is having the reaction occurs at the same location as the stored energy.

There are an estimated 150,000 car fires in the US every year. I don't think either of us has the data available to make an apples to apples comparison but I very much doubt that battery powered cars will prove to be meaningfully more hazardous that gasoline powered ones.

With fuel, combustion chambers are very distinct and distant from storage tanks.

Gasoline does not have to be in a combustion chamber to ignite. A hot manifold with a leaking fuel line is more than enough to set a car on fire.

Re:here's why this is stupid

[Mikkeles]

No. It prevents the heat from forming in the first place by stopping the reaction that would produce it.