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Boeing 787 battery shows short-circuiting

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“thermal runaway,” that sounds really scary, I hope they fix this ASAP!

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I truly hope that BOEING and the NTSB and FAA hold the Japanese company that designed these batteries financially responsible for the loss of business and the cost of delays.

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The Boeing 787 Dreamliner battery that caught fire earlier this month in Boston shows evidence of short-circuiting and a chemical reaction known as “thermal runaway,” in which an increase in temperature causes progressively hotter temperatures, federal accident investigators said Thursday.

Looks like a lot of naysayers will be wrong... It's looking more and more to be exactly what I've been saying from the start, that this is a case of manufacturing error on replaced batteries.

Elbuda MexicanoJan. 25, 2013 - 09:09AM JST

“thermal runaway,” that sounds really scary, I hope they fix this ASAP!

Absolutely all batteries have thermal runaway, as does the kerosine used for fuel. It's not scary at all, just an engineering term for a chemical function of the batteries. It just so happens that the lithium cobalt batteries used here are susceptible to thermal runaway starting at 120C rather than the 250C for lithium phosphate and slightly higher for others. There's no fixing thermal runaway (since you can't change the laws of physics, and all batteries have it), but you can make sure it never gets there.

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few years back due to short circuiting of Sony has to recall millions of laptop batteries. Reason for short circuiting was accidental mixing of some metal debris.

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Haha!!! the best thing for flyers, check the plane model when booking your plane ticket. Until these problems of 787 are solved.

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Should have asked the U.S. military, NASA, Japanese company, or S. Korean company to build a better battery.

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Haha!!! the best thing for flyers, check the plane model when booking your plane ticket. Until these problems of 787 are solved.

What good would that do? None of the 787's are going to carry passengers again until the battery problems are resolved. You aren't going to be able to book a ticket on a 787 until they're cleared for a return to service.

Thermal runaway happens in a lot of devices. In the old days of discrete solid-state circuit boards, you could have a transistor "blow it's top" because of thermal runaway. It happened when a transistor heated up. The heat changed the electrical properties of the transistor - allowing it to pass more current than it was supposed to - causing a resulting increase in heat generated, causing more current to flow, (repeat the cycle until structural failure of the "can"). Current-limiting circuits had to be designed into the circuit board to prevent the transistor from destroying itself.

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Those lithium batteries has always been a problem. Maybe another design? Or a more expensive one.

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overchanJan. 26, 2013 - 05:31AM JST

Those lithium batteries has always been a problem. Maybe another design? Or a more expensive one.

"Those" batteries have never been used anywhere else, and in two years of service in 787s they never had problems. Saying they have always been a problem is downright wrong. The technology has been used elsewhere, and is perfectly safe unless the batteries are overcharged (not the case here) or there is a manufacturing error (which is like saying you accidentally put nitroglycerine in a gallon of fuel, and happens to all batteries, not just Li-ion). Why they picked lithium cobalt instead of lithium phosphate batteries is the real question, since lithium phosphate is far safer thanks to a higher thermal limit.

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