Elemental Lithium in cells?

I was discussingmy processing setupwith the EH&S lead at a local college, that receives a lot of Li-Ion packs, and one of his concerns was that there may be elemental Lithium which is highly reactive with water. I was under the impression that the Lithium was in a chemical compound, making it less/not reactive to water.

I'm curious as to whether I am wrong on this. I have seen more than one person mention putting runaway cells in a bucket of salt water, which could be dangerous if there is elemental Lithium.

I'll post his safety doc later,if he gives me permission. I thought it was pretty good safety and disposal procedures document.

Thanks again,
Shawn

Putting cells in salt water, is usually done after discharging. However, even with a cell that is in process of running away, the water will help contain the fire, and keep the reaction cooler.

Rechargeable lithium in any form is a lithium ion. Primary batteries (one-time use/disposable) use lithium metal (elemental lithium).

Nothing can stop a runaway cell, you can only try to cool the reaction down to stop it spreading, but otherwise, it just has to burn itself out.

Hi, I just wanted to thank you all for your answers. Sorry it took so long to respond, I just had a massive project dumped on me at work last week, and spent the weekend doing taxes.

I spent some time reading on this at BU, and Dallski sums it up well.

When I had a cylindrical 26650 cell catch on fire from being shortout, putting water on it kept the surrounding cells from overheating. The water buys you time to keep the fire from spreading. The water won't make the fire any worst, eventually the firedies down after reflashing a couple of times.

Lithium in direct contact with water immediately starts a fire.

In fact, a nice experiment one can do is drop a little piece of lithium in water and it will float and burn.

Now a cell contains a long sheet of lithium so there's a small change that enough of that surface can come in contact with water, but if enough surface does, it will sustain a fire.

If you want to contain a li-ion fire use fire-proof cold oil and cold water only if you don't have oil. A Class D extinguisher is also an option, although Lithium-ion batteries are considered a Class B situation.
If the fire of a burning lithium-ion battery cannot be extinguished, allow the pack to burn in a controlled and safe way.

Be aware of cell propagation as each near-by cell might be consumed when becoming toohot.

I also found this:
https://www.safelincs.co.uk/lith-ex-fire-extinguisher/
Which seems to be anextinguisher specially designed for Li-Ion.