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As we now know, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner entire in-service fleet is grounded for full NTSB inspection, an action pretty much unexpected, given that every new airplane takes years and years and years to perfect. Speculation abounds, perhaps with the problematic lithium batteries in the lead of the airplane’s “teething problems,” a term which, some shareholder dentists came up with. Or, better yet, “glitches,” those short-term, transient problems in products. Marketers prefer ‘glitches’ because it is comforting to a passing traveler to say to another, regarding the plane engulfed in flames on the tarmac, “Oh. That’s just a glitch.” The term “teething problems” is now called “real concern” (see video). It is not a cracked engine. It is a glitch. Those are not flames. Those are teething problems.Lithium battery fires? Glitch-teething problems.
This is by no means the first of the list of problems for the 787 Dreamliner. In 2009, regarding multiple production delays, the following problems were reported:
“Out of screws”
“Drink cart didn’t have enough room for Sprite”
“Fired the guy who knew how to make the engines” (note: There is always some bit of truth in satire)
“Seats weren’t that comfortable”
“Lost keys to room that has all the wings”
“Had to start over from scratch when someone noticed that all the stenciling read “Boring 787″”
Safety inspectors were able to see the strings”
In a more recent Onion article titled, American Voices, what do you think (about the Dreamliner), random statements include:
“What a piece of shit.”
Sherryl Parmelee –
Botanist
“It’s a shame they don’t get that the so-called defects are Boeing’s deeper statement about the fragile nature of dreams and aircraft.”
Clayton Sanchez –
Rug Designer
“Why are they doing this? If they just let Sully fly those planes everything would be fine.”
Carlos Dixon –
Pearl Stringer
To be fair, here is the text of Boeing’s official statement on the current status and FAA investigation of the 787 Dreamliner:
BOEING SEATTLE, Jan. 24, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — Boeing (NYSE: BA) welcomes the progress being made in the 787 investigation discussed today by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Washington, D.C. The regulatory and investigative agencies in the U.S. and Japan have dedicated substantial resources to these investigations, and we appreciate their effort and leadership.
Boeing continues to assist the NTSB and the other government agencies in the U.S. and Japan responsible for investigating two recent 787 incidents. The company has formed teams consisting of hundreds of engineering and technical experts who are working around the clock with the sole focus of resolving the issue and returning the 787 fleet to flight status. We are working this issue tirelessly in cooperation with our customers and the appropriate regulatory and investigative authorities. The safety of passengers and crew members who fly aboard Boeing airplanes is our highest priority.
In order to ensure the integrity of the process and in adherence to international protocols that govern safety investigations, we are not permitted to comment directly on the ongoing investigations. Boeing is eager to see both investigative groups continue their work and determine the cause of these events, and we support their thorough resolution.
Boeing deeply regrets the impact that recent events have had on the operating schedules of our customers and their passengers.
Contact:
Marc Birtel
Boeing Commercial Airplanes
+1 425-266-5822
marc.r.birtel@boeing.com
SOURCE Boeing
Boeing 787 batteries seemed to clear a hurdle this week as US and Japanese officials came up with few answers in their initial probes into the Boeing 787′s battery fires. Some blame the company’s outsourcing strategy and a weak permitting process for the Boeing 787′s woes.
Dreamliner Flew Thanks To Lowered Safety Standards
Air India puts Boeing’s Dreamliner planes up for sale, leaseback
JAL 787 caught fire in Boston just 18 days after delivery from Boeing
The Japan Airlines (JAL) Boeing 787 that caught fire Jan. 7 in Boston had been in the airline’s possession for just 18 days.
More details about the fire and the aircraft are emerging as the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) provides further updates, but finding a cause for the blaze continues to be elusive for investigators.
The Science Behind Dreamliner’s Batteries
Jet’s Power Units Store a Lot of Energy in Small Package; Risks of Fire During Recharging
When I last posted about the 787 Dreamliner, I posed the hypothetical “Would the rich stockholders fly on a Dreamliner today?” Well, now, for the moment any way, the question is moot. Again, my opinion about this is the outsourcing. I believe in the 787, I really do. I see it as a ‘green,’ light and fuel efficient plane with great potential. But, quality control simply cannot hail from so many different sources, factories, and countries, because the regulations all vary, so no, I do not believe that selling work product to the lowest bidder to turn a huge profit for a very few is viable or ethical. We need the jobs to remain here.
38 Comments
Lithium batteries burn, they catch on fire. Neil Young tried to have designers build him an economically running (though very expensive to custom-build) hybrid with a new sophisticated Lithium battery. It burned.
One flaw to using Lithium that I notice is that the batteries apparently need to have their own cooling systems, which are not yet designed, and when they are ‘perfected,’ they will greatly compromise the potential energy available to Lithium-powered devices.
To reiterate the obvious, they should fix the problem before they proceed.
If you, or someone wouldn’t mind explaining lithium batteries to me as if I am five years old (with ADD), I would really appreciate it. What kind of liquid do they have, for example? Lithium is a metal, highly reactive and flammable, right? So, what business does it have doing on an airplane, while the passengers are stripping butt-ass naked, going through full-body x-rays, having their bottled shampoo and water stolen, while the
real bomb materials are either a) right there on the plane or b) run, in the luggage like shit through a goose in a conveyor belt to the belly of the plane?
I mean for real. Why in the actual fuck am I standing in O’Hare without a belt, with buttcrack pants, while the lithium batteries are already on the goddamn airplane?
sorry for the grammar.I still have the flu.
I’m afraid that I can’t explain how a Lithium battery works, but I do pay attention to enormous deception in the Lithium industry:
Lots of places get called “the Saudi Arabia of Lithium”: Bolivia, Afghanistan, Texas, Chile…
Calling them new Saudi Arabias says to capitalists “Let’s exploit poor people in those locations by having them do the back-hurting work of surface-mining Lithium” which can be done anyplace in the world where people can be made to work insane hours in the hot sun for little pay.
But it is a deception to even say that there can be a Saudi Arabia of Lithium: It isn’t a source of energy, like Saudi Arabia’s Oil, it just stores energy. And obviously, not well enough.
Because it exists throughout the Earth’s crust, it can be harvested without hurting anyone’s back, using herbs such as Hemp and Larkspur.
But I don’t think Lithium is a long-term answer at all. We need to either move on to the next battery type, or go back to the previous kind, the kind that didn’t burn.
Pretty much what you get when you let “Bean Counters” design an aircraft. Or anything else for that matter.
Ah capitalism…you gotta love it…or NOT.
Who designed the batteries?
Who wrote the test plan for the batteries?
Who approved the test plan for the batteries?
Who was responsible for Quality Assurance of the test plan?
Who executed the battery test plan?
Who wrote up the results?
Who approved production of the batteries from the test results?
Noting get this far in a complex engineering project without multiple review by many people with many senior “recommendations to proceed” and may “recommended fixes” and whole databases of engineering flaws and fixes during the design process.
Wheres this documentation, Boeing?
Especially the email of “concerns” glossed over or suppressed by the politically “astute” rising in the the Boeing management chain (those on the fast track).
Let’s see all the doc. (The shareholders should demand it, so should Boeing’s customers).
If they don;t produce it not, the lawyers will have to “use discovery to find it.”
Ah, Quality Control. Perhaps that can shed some light on safety concerns. I was once a QC Inspector. I inspected catheters that were be inserted permanently into patients’ hearts.
I wore a magnifying loop in my eye, and took one hundred catheters out of many thousands produced, and I cut them in half, to get a good look at the inside. Out of those one hundred, if and when I found as many as 15 which had “scratched seats” – that is, if it seemed that there could be leakage at the point where the tiny pieces touched – then, I had to flag that lot of 15,000 catheters as questionable.
The next morning, my boss would come in and re-examine the catheters which I had considered questionable. He would then say that they were alright.
Let’s discuss Lithium:
The stuff that’s in all portable devices and sails through “airport security”.
here’s an experiment (please note the caveats after the experiment):
1. Take a drill and drill a hole (very slowly) though a Lithium Battery (somewhere very dry). Heat is not your friend here.
2. Leave the battery in the “somewhere very dry” (if you are not aflame at this point).
3. Fill a bucket with water and put in in a clear place outdoors.
4. Pick up the battery with (very dry) tongs. Put it on a (very dry) spade.
5. Toss the battery into the bucket in (3) with the spade.
6. Run away, then turn and watch.
And remember folks, there are hundreds of these batteries on every flight, made by the lowest bidder to the highest of standards) and have passed through the portals of those “protecting our safety”.
Please let me know if you plan to do (1) anywhere near me (I live in SoCal). I’d like to be in Texas before you start. Or Europe.
Lithium is a highly reactive light metal. Lithium, like all light metals loves oxygen. So much that it will steal the oxygen out of water, leaving the hydrogen (sob, divorced from its oxygen) to escape into the air, where the hydrogen will be very eager to be married again (immediately) with oxygen.
Lithium is so aggressive at extracting oxygen out of water that it can even provide the heat (exothermically) to get the released hydrogen and surrounding oxygen above its flashpoint, where the hydrogen and oxygen can have their own (exothermic) party. aka: Flaming ball of fire.
Which is why the planes are grounded.
That worked so well in the US Auto industry that they made it a profit center (spare part & repairs). That did not end well (Japanese car invasion).
Thank you, Synoia. These are all concrete, reasonable questions that should be explained in an understandable, concise way, without fluff, glossing, missing information and lingo. I am also beginning to wonder about the HazMat angle. What sorts of toxic substances, if any, are in these batteries? Until all of this information is known maybe we should return to the drawing board.
Have to have another look at your comment, because my eyes are playing tricks, and you may have posted all links, sorry for the trouble.
Okay, yes, I see your point. Basically, a type of explosive, under the right conditions. An explosive. While I strip my belt, shoes, jacket, and possessions onto a bogus conveyor belt…it is the very airplane itself that has the dangerous stuff on it….those lithium batteries.
Interesting. I worked for a catheter company for 9 years. They were made in Indiana. And that is where I learned just how crucial QC can be. It can be the difference between life and death, and that is not over dramatic in the least.
“Life and death” is why I found it so disturbing that every lot I flagged – and the other Inspectors too – every one was just passed quickly on. Once they got one returned from the company that bought them. The boss that passed them got mad.
It was in Florida. The company was South African-owned, and this was back in the Slavery/Apartheid era. A noisy, smelly back room was filled with machines where poor African Americans made catheters and rubber bottle-stoppers. I had to wear a protective mask and fill in for one of the laborers on a machine during their half-hour unpaid lunch break.
But the hardest part of the job was sunset. Folding the flag. Now, for religious and ethical reasons, I had stopped saluting the flag back in junior high school. But in a work context, I could go ahead and carefully, respectfully fold up the American flag in the proper prescribed way, just like we were taught in Boy Scouts. Then, I had to do the same for the Slavery flag.
I wanted to throw it down and stomp on it. I didn’t.
Three of our country’s most advanced aircraft – the 787, the F-22 and the F-35 are all having problems that point more toward the concept of how a complicated system is supposed to fit together and actually work than toward single problems. The F-22 oxygen problem for pilots, various F-35 problems, and the 787 lithium battery fiasco show an industry at odds with practical reality.
Um, lessee, um, “when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Or maybe not? Physics are not bullshitable.
Interesting post, Mme Crane-Station. Hope you are getting over that flu thing and feeling better.
One has to understand batteries (stored energy) and explosions.
An explosion is a sudden (very fast) release of stored energy (typically thousands of joules (kj) in less than a second).
One watt is one joule per second.
A battery is a store of energy. When working under design condition s releases energy (chemical energy) converted to electricity slowly (less than 5 watts/minute)
A battery that can deliver 5 watts per minute for 3 hours stores about 1 kj of energy.
When shorted out the battery can delive the 1 kj of energy very quickly, so quickly that it can heat the battery to a temperature where the lithium can reach flashpoint with the oxygen in the surrounding air.
The electrical discharge is thus a fuse for the resulting chemical reaction with the light metal (which wants to donate electron to oxygen, which aggressively wants the elections) to make a metal oxide.
Metals freely give up electrons which is why they are good conductors of electricity.
Burning a metal ( Metal + Oxygen -> Metal oxide) results in a very hot (fast) fire.
Very hot fast fires start other fires very quickly, especially in a plastic interior (such as an airplane).
A lithium battery burning is potentially an explosion, and is a very hot fire. The degree of heat (or explosion) depends on how easily the oxygen from the air can react with the metal in the battery.
We are lucky. The 787 fires are relatively slow burning.
I do wonder about the mechanical stability (creep and fatigue) from vibration and landing effects on 787 battery construction from the flights (and this would have been tested in a good test regime).
I’d refer you to unexpected effects from metals by flight in the unhappy tale of the De Havilland Comet I.
Good reply and point, EdwardTeller, and thank you.
Thank you for the physics lesson and I will look up and read about the DeHavilland, much appreciated, Synoia.
Thanks, HotFlash. It felt like being hit with a team of sledgehammers for a while there; I am feeling tired but better, so thanks again.
Very educational thread – do feel better, Crane-Station!
Recommended.
Thank you for the read and the rec, juliania, and I am feeling better today.
Lithium batteries Tech does has problems but they are well known now. When the Dreamliner was first built these problems were not well known so it seems likely Boeing Executives overruled their engineers who pointed out these problems and suggested a design change to fix the problem.
There is no way Boeing Electrical Engineers were not aware of new knowledge about Lithium batteries that would be like a Cubs Fan not knowing the new spring lineup.
I thought this was the battery just overheating but if Boeing built a cheap case for these batteries and LET water get to the Lithium then they are morons and likely Criminally Neglectful. Your explanation was about Lithium by the way was very informative.
I’m so glad you point this out because Mason and I had this discussion just yesterday. I am certain that somebody, some really smart engineer with a name knew about these potential and serious problems, and chances are, they warned the Boeing Brass. But, it likely stopped there, because we all know about the current war on whistle blowers. Not only will a whistle blower likely never work again, they could end up in prison. Not acceptable, of course, but that seems to be the current reality.
Thank you for the comment.
Do we know for sure these fires were a Lithium water reaction or just the result of an overheated battery igniting nearby flammable material?
Toyota at first refused to use Lithium Batteries in their first hybrid cars precisely because these batteries catch fire any engineer heck even guys like me knew about this problem Crane:)
Boeing had to know about this thats a given. If your airplane catches fire after only 18 days then given how much testing airplanes are put through then yes Boeing had to know.
I wonder how many planes caught fire while boeing was testing them? How do we get that information Freedom of Information act, lawsuit, subpoena?
This is just a shot in the dark, but I seriously doubt a FOIA would go anywhere. IANAL, but Mason is, and he is commenting here, that since this is a current subject of an NTSB investigation, FOIA requests will likely be declined at this point.
Synoia @17 gave a real good explanation. I’ll just add one thing. If you have a cellphone or other mobile device, you have a device powered by a lithium battery, albeit a very small one. Many wristwatches also are powered by lithium batteries.
Use that device long enough and you will feel some heat. That’s from the chemical reaction in the battery. But those batteries are tiny, and incapable of generating enough heat to catch the component chemicals on fire.
The batteries on Boeing’s jets are huge in comparison, and thus generate much, much more heat. This was a known problem during the design process, but, as I understand it, the FAA simply accepted Boeing’s assertions that the batteries were safe and would not catch fire. They didn’t run their own, independent tests.
Certainly no way to regulate a railroad, or an airline. Oh, yeah, regulation and Big Gubmint bad, private enterprise good.
I doubt it is water. It is some mechanical failure of the batteries, possibly a heat induced change in the batter material properties (change of flexibility, creep, or cracking) under operation conditions.
The mechanical properties of Lithium are not well known, and the body of practice in using the material small.
Sell Boeing. This is going to get very ugly.
Thank you Ohio Barbarian, and Synoia, for your very informative comments about the properties of Lithium and the batteries. I have learned a lot from the comments, much appreciated. Gives me pause, that Boeing may not have run some independent tests; makes me wonder what the future will be for the backup system in the 787.
NTSB issues sixth update on JAL Boeing 787 battery fire investigation.
January 29
WASHINGTON – The National Transportation Safety Board today released the sixth update on its investigation into the Jan. 7 fire aboard a Japan Airlines Boeing 787 at Logan International Airport in Boston.
The examination of the damaged battery continues. The work has transitioned from macroscopic to microscopic examinations and into chemical and elemental analysis of the areas of internal short circuiting and thermal damage.
The Boeing Company
NYSE: BA – Jan 29 5:46pm ET
73.65-0.35 (-0.47%)
Reminder: You most likely have one of those lithium bombs in your pocket. It is common in cell phones and MP3 players.
I would also not be too quick to blame the batteries; the charging circuits and voltage regulators used in the discharge are what we call switchers. The switching power supply is a spectacular invention. It is the reason that your electronics chargers are so tiny and run so cool. BUT… they can be very very finicky. A failure in these circuits can cause a perfectly fine lithium battery to fail in the same way.
In my early work prototyping switchers, I used to call it rocket science because when it failed, all you have is tiny burnt pieces spread over a large area to guess what caused the failure. I would add one turn of wire onto the coil and all the parts would literally blow off the circuit board and burn a hole into the board itself. Build the next one without the extra turn and it would run for years.
A top-of-the-head-guess would give a failed charger or regulator a 50-50 chance of causing a battery to fail as well.
Thank you so much for bringing your personal knowledge and experience to this discussion. What you describe seems to pretty much match the picture above: something so burned that it would be difficult to know what happened exactly. I suppose that is why they are taking microscopes to the things. Perhaps that will help identify what you are talking about with the switchers or chargers. Great information, thank you. Seems like there is no easy answer to this thing.
I will not add to the Lithium discussion here as it has been very well covered by other experts.
However there are other devices that could be used either by themselves or in conjunction with Lithium or other batteries that would help to mitigate this problem.
One would be the use of so called Ultra or Super capacitors with values in the Farads or 10s or Farad range. These can store and enormous amounts of electricity. Can be charged and discharged 1000s of times with not physical damage and can be discharged dumping all their capacity into a load with no physical damage.
There currently are companies looking into their use in EVs for this very reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_double-layer_capacitor
But as you can see they too are not without their disadvantages as well. There is no free lunch.
And it looks like the Ultra capacitor might be an answer. New MIT design. http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/a-novel-ultracapacitor.html