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US Bars Lithium-ion Batteries From Passenger Aircraft Cargo (cnet.com)
The U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration have issued new rules designed to protect air passengers from the potential dangers of lithium ion batteries. From a report: The new Transportation Department rules come after Congress last year directed the agency to adopt the new rules. The new restriction doesn't apply to passengers or crew bringing electronics aboard aircraft. "This rule will strengthen safety for the traveling public by addressing the unique challenges lithium batteries pose in transportation," US Secretary of Transportation Elaine L. Chao said in a statement. In the past couple of years, the use of lithium-ion batteries has been linked to fires and spewing smoke in a slew of products, including Samsung's now-canceled Galaxy Note 7, hoverboards and Boeing's 787 Dreamliner.
The proper response would have been to ban all Li-Ion batteries from passenger aircraft holds and cargo aircraft. This would have forced manufacturers to air-ship phones and laptops without batteries. With any luck, this would have encouraged the development of standardized, user installable batteries for electronics that would have ground-shipped to brick-and-mortar places and been readily available for sale.
Sadly, no one has the balls to disrupt the disposable device cartels.
The 787 avionic batteries where "FAA Certified" but we all know what happened with those things.
Now they are packaged in "flame proof" containment systems designed to keep stuff around them from going up in flames. Good luck doing that with a battery designed to hold enough energy to power an aircraft on a 9 hour flight.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
So I'm curious how this is going to work when I bring my Camera bag ( Think Tank Glass Limo ) with me as a carry-on and the flight attendant tells me there isn't any room and I will need to check my bag. Batteries already installed in the camera bodies should be fine, but I'm curious how they'll deal with the spares I carry. Typically, one spare per camera body.
Not that I'm about to check my camera gear. I'll deplane before I do so since the airline will refuse to reimburse me for the $15k+ worth of gear in said bag when one of their thugs . . . . er ' baggage handlers ' helps themselves to the contents or bounces it off the pavement.
I suppose, under the new rules, I can just tell the flight attendant that my bag contains fully charged Li-Ion batteries and cannot be checked ?
This should be fun :|
Flying LA-Vegas or Boston-NYC is idiotic when you could build a train or hyperloop, both of which can be powered electrically without dealing with batteries. Flying requires expending energy to climb to altitude, whereas trains run on the surface (more or less). And regenerative braking in planes would tend to be inefficient compared to wheeled vehicles.
Passenger flights often allocate some of their space for regular air cargo. This isn't about banning your computer or camera from being in your luggage. Luggage hold is not cargo hold. What they are avoiding is a passenger plane being used to ferry batteries as a cargo carrier where you could have a box of dozens of them in a confined space. I don't have an issue with this.
But google co-founder larry page funded startup Kitty Hawk wants you to strap a nice big lithium battery between your legs and go weeeeeee https://flyer.aero/
Hydrogen will never be a fuel for airliners. Compressed to 700 bar, it has a specific energy about 3.5 times greater than jet fuel but energy density one quarter that of jet fuel. The containment vessels will be too heavy to justify the increased specific energy, and it would require an increase in the volume (or a substantial reduction in maximum range) anyway.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
and li-ion batteries and the devices that contain them are allowed in the mail.
There are restriction on Li-ion batteries in airmail and priority mail. There are limits on size, and the package must be specially marked.
Good luck doing that with a battery designed to hold enough energy to power an aircraft on a 9 hour flight.
Battery tech is improving by leaps and bounds. Reliability is way better than it was even 5 years ago.
Right... Look, all you need to understand is the *potential* is the problem... The Avionic backup batteries in the 787 where "aircraft" parts, meaning that they where manufactured and tracked to very strict and exacting specifications. These where the best quality we could manage at the time and we've seen at least three fires, one during flight testing and at least two I remember since. The aircraft was even grounded by the FAA for a couple of weeks due to this problem, until the containment system was retrofitted and put into place on all flying aircraft.
The FAA simply won't let this happen again. So battery tech may be getting better, but history shows that even under the best manufacturing and quality situation we can muster, they still can catch fire and release huge amounts of energy. Which is why, in this case, the FAA is taking such batteries OUT of the cargo holds of passenger aircraft. They are too dangerous. I don't see technology improvements fixing this anytime soon.
Also, nobody is going to use batteries for a 9 hour flight. Electric planes will be used for short hops, like LAX to Las Vegas, or Boston to NYC.
Long flights may go to hydrogen, but certainly not batteries.
Now I AM laughing at you... Do you have ANY clue how dangerous hydrogen is to handle and use? Any idea how much hydrogen you'd need for a 9 hour flight and how much space this would take, even if you went with liquid hydrogen? Compared to kerosene (which Jet 1A really is) the energy density isn't even close and the fuel handling problems are a lot less of an issue. BESIDES... How do you think industrial level production of hydrogen gas works? Right now, hydrogen is generated from reforming Natural Gas....
Honestly, you'd be better off trying bio-fuels for this... Except that growing enough corn to power a 747 for 9 hours is going to take a LOT of ground, fertilizer, and fuel to run the farming equipment. I shudder to thing of how much environmental impact all that would have.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
For those who would prefer to see the actual announcement rather than discussion of it on an add ridden site with auto-play video you can go to
https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/news...
A 52L tank weighs around 54 kg and hold about 2 kg of hydrogen, meaning energy stored - by weight - it's quite a bit lighter than batteries, even when you figure in the weight of the tank. That's about 280 MJ of storage for 56 kg, whereas LiIon batteries would be around 322 kg. Jet A still beats both, but compressed hydrogen is a lot better than batteries when it comes to weight - and that's a big killer to get things into the air.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
It's a 52L tank - that's pretty darn small. By volume, compressed hydrogen is about 4 times as efficient as Li-Ion batteries; you get ~4 times the energy in a liter of volume. AC points out the fuel cell efficiency gains - meaning that instead of completely wiping the floor with batteries, compressed hydrogen only wipes 90% of the floor with batteries.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!