San Diego County has a large lithium battery disposal facility in the Otay Mesa area a few miles south of the city. Last week that facility experienced a fire that took more than a dozen Fire Fighters over ten (10) hours to extinguish. One of the problems was that the fire continued to erupt after they thought it was out. In fact they are not certain that it's fully contained today.

This fire points out the fact that disposing of lithium batteries is far more difficult and dangerous than Officials are saying. We have only begun to dispose of, or recycle these batteries and the fact is they don't have a safe way to even handle even this small volume.

If you live near a disposal site you might want to give this some serious consideration. The entire area around this site was shut down for days.

Bob

Here’s a good chance to start a business, battery recycling.

Mike is right. I’m sure our government is chomping at the bit to give someone billions of our money to deal with them.

quote:

Originally posted by CURTIS REED:
Mike is right. I’m sure our government is chomping at the bit to give someone billions of our money to deal with them.

I bet there are a boatload of restrictions for recycling than storing and selling plus permits!

quote:

Lithium Battery Fire In San Diego County

Not just hours, but days... and it still might not be 100% contained. And they've had as many as 40 firefighters involved at one point.

Smoldering battery fire in Otay Mesa

The fire is still not under control.

Now the key concern is the long time air quality for residents in the area plus the proximity of the fire to schools and Hospitals.

The County installed eight EV charging stations in the Lindo Lake parking lot (Lakeside, Ca) about four weeks ago. Only one of the eight is functional, and it's never been used. At this rate it will take several hundred years to be able to service EV's in our rural area. "Progress" has a peculiar definition in Sacramento. One step forward and 1,000 steps backwards.

I wonder how much the fire improved the air quality in Otay?

Bob

Hell we will just give china billions to dispose of the billions in batterys they sold us.

If the Lithium and all the materials in there are so hard to mine and recover you would think they would find a way to recycle all of it.

My bet is if we ask another country to dispose of the old batteries, we will begin to see the ocean rise. I have no doubt this may have been a good idea, but to try to get it set up overnight is going to be a mistake. Better planning was needed and cooperation of all countries. Not sure I learned it in grade school or just from my parents, but as a child, I remember the earth turns. Sounds like an old TV show. ha ha

that's exactly why the battery suppliers at work don't deal with Li-Ion batteries. Liability, transport, storage, etc.

there are places that buy them-outside the USA. They'll disassemble the battery packs and pull the good cells out, and make new packs with them. Ukraine was doing some of this and using them in drones. Others may be doing similar, I don't know--I have kind of quit keeping up with it/them.

Our battery supplier at work will NOT take lithium batteries because of fire hazard. Liability concerns. So when we replace one, and I haven't had to do very many, we just pile them up out back away from everything within a fence until the 'buyer' shows up to get them. They won't buy small stuff, but they'll buy a whole bunch of smaller ones if we have enough. So far that hasn't happened, so we just have the two packs sitting out there inside a fence until they're passing through. One manufacturer ships them back on a pallet-but I don't know what they do with them. Pallet is specially made to be reusable, and we have to put placards and such on the outside so that the shipper knows what they're dealing with. Kind of tedious but it is what it is.

quote:

Originally posted by wideopen231:
Hell we will just give china billions to dispose of the billions in batterys they sold us.

Couple years ago there was a warehouse fire out by Morris, IL. Building was full of junk batteries. Building was leased by a company in China, manager was Chinese and disappeared after the fire started. Water from the fire ran off into a nearby stream creating a toxic spill. It was a freaking mess.

That's how the Chinese will dispose of them.....