this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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That's one thing that annoys me about lithium batteries. Every time there's an EV fire, people pop out of the woodwork to shit on the FD for using water to put it out.
Just because the name has lithium in it doesn't mean it's elemental lithium.
It’s a situation of just enough knowledge, I think. It’s true that water won’t put out an EV battery fire, but it will cool it down and prevent the fire from spreading.
Well, it will put out the fire, but it does it by cooling the battery down so the reaction stops (like you said)
I guess it depends on what burns. Water is conductive, so you might not want to use it to put out an electrical fire because of the risk of electrocution.
A lithium battery fire is a chemical fire, not an electrical one. There's pretty much a zero percent chance of getting electrocuted putting one out with water.
What does EV and FD stand for?
Electric vehicle and fire department.
On one side of the battery, it is elemental Lithium.
It exchanges electrons across a membrane with another substantial.
Using water on it is bad because the reaction between Lithium and water evolves Hydrogen gas, which ignites in the fire.
You're wrong.
Lithium batteries contain little to no elemental lithium. They normally contain lithium cobalt oxide, lithium iron phosphate, or lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide as the anode, and a lithium salt as the electrolyte.
Water is about the only way to put one out because it's an exothermic reaction (water is to cool it down so it stops), and two out of the three are self-oxidizing so you can't just smother it.
The biggest danger of a lithium battery getting wet is that it shorts, which can lead to a fire because it goes into thermal runaway. But this can happen if you have one in your pocket with spare change (most of the vape fires in the 2010s were this)
A tiny "ackshually" is that there also exist non-rechargeable lithium batteries that have actual elemental lithium in them, which might be adding to the confusion.
Even those aren't elemental lithium. They use Lithium-iron disulfide, Lithium-thionyl chloride, Lithium-manganese dioxide, and Lithium-sulfur dioxide.
In every one you mention elemental lithium is the anode and whatever second part in the name is the cathode.
https://youtube.com/shorts/yGDkiUAwxRs
You're wrong
You're trolling or what?
Metallic lithium != elemental lithium. If you scrolled down to the chemistry section, they list both the anode and cathode. Nothing in the list has elemental lithium.
Elemental lithium means that it's pure lithium, i.e. not being in a compound with any other element. Metallic lithium means that lithium is a metal in its pure form. You're awfully confident for how little you seem to know about basic chemistry.
Still didn't scroll down to chemistry, did you?
I did. Every one except lithium iron phosphate at the bottom has elemental lithium as anode. What is your point and why do you like to argue so much?