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To: Zhang Fei
I am betting on murder suicide arson.

Could be. I'm betting that one of the lithium batteries ignited while on the charger overnight.

I posted this on another thread, but it bears repeating here. (See: Once the fire started, it was too late for many on board the Conception)


When a LIPO goes up, it happens very quickly and without warning. It's a very hot burning, hard to extinguish fire that puts out dense clouds of toxic white smoke. It's possible that, even with a watch occurring on schedule, the fire could start and quickly get out of control. I'm talking seconds here, not minutes. So, even if the E exit weren't blocked, the odds of the passengers finding their way out would be almost impossible, especially with panic setting in.

Here's the real danger in a situation like that. As I wrote, consumer-grade LIPOs have the protection circuit. The packs w/o the circuit are considered hobby-grade. You can charge hobby-grade LIPOs without the circuit, but it requires the use of a smart charger. This could be in the form of a human being, as was the case in the early days of R/C model LIPO usage. (circa-2000) Or, you can use a smart charger that monitors all the cell voltages and adjusts input to each cell accordingly. There are no consumer-grade smart chargers.

Since consumer-grade LIPOs have the protection circuit, the charger can be a dumb charger that simply uses a pre-determined schedule to charge the batteries. This is what all modern consumer-grade electronic devices use.

Here's the catch. If you use a hobby-grade LIPO with a modern dumb charger, it almost guarantees that, at some point, you'll have a LIPO conflagration due to cell imbalance. Here's the double catch. There is no way to visually distinguish a good LIPO that has the circuit from the cheap chicom knock-off w/o the circuit.

13 posted on 09/06/2019 10:41:10 AM PDT by Ol' Dan Tucker (For 'tis the sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard., -- Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 4)
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To: Ol' Dan Tucker

Could you please dummy down the lithium charger info for the technically challenged among us?


65 posted on 09/06/2019 11:24:48 AM PDT by Flaming Conservative ((Pray without ceasing))
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