Venting Gas Was Cause Of GM Battery Explosion That Injured Five

Kill the Troll! Kill the Troll! Kill the Troll!

Sorry, could not resist (thank you, Magnushawk):

1 killed, 3 injured in refinery explosion April 2nd.
http://www.nst.com.my/latest/1-killed-3-injured-in-refinery-explosion-1.69747

BP refinery leaks hydrofluoric acid in TX
http://news.yahoo.com/texas-city-officials-monitoring-leak-bp-complex-142539419.html

April 2010 Refinery Explosion Which Killed 7 workers still having effect as workers strike upon return to refinery:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/05/us-usa-labor-tesoro-mandan-idUSBRE83412P20120405

Tanker truck closes highway for days - 100 firefighters needed to quell flames. 1 day ago.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2126891/Fuel-tanker-bursts-flames-US-freeway-crash-caused-drunken-driver.html

April 7th - Romanian Oil Refinery explodes and injures 6.
http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=138295

April 9th - Car ignites at gas station... empty LP tank and lit cigarette to blame, but who cares? - cool picture
http://www.news8000.com/news/Gas-station-fire-investigation/-/326/10365856/-/12ukjwtz/-/index.html

April 9th - Gasoline car on lift explodes in flames - Environmental concerns linger. - Cool picture:
http://www.theprogress.com/news/146727685.html

April 11th - One man injured in oil tank explosion:
http://www.wmtw.com/news/maine/Man-suffers-burns-in-Manchester-explosion/-/8792012/10435560/-/rme6qv/-/index.html

April 11th - Worker saves driver and others from explosion of gasoline car at a gas station
http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/Gas-Station-Worker-Pulls-Woman-From-Burning-Car-146894485.html

Did any of these make it on AutoSpies? More than once?

Keep up the good work, vdiv. When I read the first post related to this, the article specifically noted that it had nothing to do with the Volt. The end result, of course, is that if anyone Googles "Volt", they're likely to see the headline "GM Battery Explosion" and not bother to read the article, adding to the perception that electric vehicles have suffered another blow.

I'm not suggesting that this event wasn't newsworthy nor that battery technology doesn't need to make significant safety improvements, but there's no question in my mind that the way they're written and the secondary sites they're linked from suggests an agenda to make people perceive that batteries are dangerous and gasoline is safe, especially if they come from GM--which seems politically motivated.

The folly, of course, is that ICEs vehicles have battery explosions all the time, as well as gasoline explosions. From straightdope.com:

"Which brings us back to the question of how often car batteries blow up. Little Ed has been calling around the federal government and so far it appears nobody keeps track of such things. (Hey, in Washington they barely notice hurricanes.) Case reports in the medical journals suggest battery accidents are fairly common--in 1978 an MD reported that his Chicago eye clinic treated 62 cases over an eight-month period. But nobody hazards a guess about the scale of the problem nationwide. Browsing on the Internet I found a couple car safety sites claiming that exploding car batteries cause 6,000 injuries annually. However, they cited no source.

Finally, Little Ed called a fellow named Carl J. Abraham, an engineer who described himself as the leading authority on exploding car batteries. Abraham told me that in the 80s he commissioned the Greater Detroit Society for the Blind (now the Greater Detroit Agency for the Blind and Visually Impaired) to survey eye doctors and hospitals and such on how many injuries they saw resulting from exploding car batteries. Apparent answer: 6,000-10,000 annually. The survey wasn't published in a professional journal, though, and I haven't been able to obtain a copy. (Abraham said he included his findings in a petition to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration requesting safety standards for car batteries. The NHTSA denied the request.) The number seems high--surely we'd hear more about exploding car batteries than we do. In any case, Abraham believes it has dropped in recent years."

Well, after the advent of sealed lead-acid batteries (SLAs) it was quickly realized that they need a venting mechanism, hence we got valve-regulated lead-acid batteries (VRLAs). Not to be confused with the older flooded or just vented lead-acid batteries (VLAs) which have another "small" disadvantage, they leak sulfuric acid. When properly installed, operated, and maintained they are safe.

Since there is a great demand on increasing the energy density of batteries, labs everywhere are experimenting with new designs, electrode and electrolyte chemistry and also assuring their safety.

That cannot be done unless the batteries are pushed to their limits and it is inherently dangerous to do that.

Check these guys: http://enviasystems.com/announcement

400 Wh/kg!! The batteries in the Volt and the Leaf are at around 200 Wh/kg (cells only). By comparison gasoline is at around 12,200 Wh/kg with about 2,000 Wh/kg actually being converted to kinetic energy.

http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Energy_density

Well, do let us know next time so we can correct that ;)