The Boeing 787 battery fire in Boston last month was caused by a battery short circuit that led to a thermal runaway condition, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has concluded.
NTSB investigators who did forensic analysis of the Boeing battery said the charred components indicated the temperature inside the 63-pound pack had exceeded 500 degrees Fahrenheit during the January 7 incident at Logan Airport. Evidence showed that one of the pack's eight cells short circuited, causing the temperature to soar.
"Our review of the flight data recorder data shows that the voltage of the battery dropped from a full charge of approximately 32 volts to approximately 28 volts," said NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman in a press conference on Thursday. "This drop is consistent with the charge voltage of a single cell."
NTSB chairman Deborah Hersman said last week that investigators have concluded that a short circuit occurred in cell number six of the pack's eight cells. (Source: NTSB)
NTSB investigators ruled out mechanical impact damage and external short circuits as the reason for problems inside the battery, Hersman said. They did not know, however, whether the short circuit was caused by battery charging or by defects in the design and construction of the unit, or some other problem.
Experts contacted by Design News said a temperature of 500 degrees can create serious problems for a lithium-ion battery pack. "It's high enough to cause the cells to bloat and possibly to burst into flame," Donald Sadoway, John F. Elliott professor of materials chemistry at MIT, told us in an email. "Remember, the electrolyte is volatile and flammable."
Boeing said it still has not announced any specific ways to fix the 787 batteries, despite reports in various news media that it has already settled on a fix. The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that the company "is looking at increasing the separation between cells in the lithium-ion batteries to reduce the potential hazards from heat or fire spreading within the batteries and adding enhanced heat sensors."
"There has been no public decision by the company on what these answers might look like or, specifically, what our teams have been working on," Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel told Design News. "We're not going to talk about a fix until we have something to share that's at the point of approval by the FAA."
Improvements like the ones mentioned by The Wall Street Journal have been the subject of much speculation over the past month. Two weeks ago, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk publicly stated that the 787 battery pack design was unsafe, and experts such as Sadoway and Elton Cairns of the University of California have suggested that an active cooling system would provide an additional layer of safety for a cost that would be miniscule compared to other 787 sub-system costs.
Sadoway again said last week that the Boeing batteries would be safer with active cooling. "That's what GM does in the Chevy Volt," he told us.
The classic question. Was it a manufacturing problem in the battery pack that caused the cell to short or did the pack overheat and then a cell failed, as so many people looking from the outside have suggested?
the cell presented is not the one from 787 but the technology should be similar.
The 787 battery pack has 8 cells serial hard connected. The cells can not be individual switched off in case of failure. The damaged cell still getting power from the good cells and aggravate the issue.
I understand that, but did the cell fail from being overheated, or did it become hot because it had failed? The folks at Tesla and others have said that this type of pack requires active cooling. If that's true will an overheated cell fail by shorting, or was the cell poorly constructed, shorted and then caused the thermal runaway?
tekochip, if I understand where you are going, is it the blame of the battery itself, or the electronics surrounding the pack. I'd be surprised if anyone takes "credit" for this mishap.
Yes, it does raise more questions. Because they've isolated the short circuit to cell number six, they should now be in a better position to track down the reason for the short. Hopefully, we'll be getting more news soon.
Yes, did it short due to poor construction, being deep cycled too often or being baked too long in that sealed box with no active cooling?
It's almost like having a murder case where the victim was poisoned, shot and stabbed by three different people and the coroner's report states that the victim died due to cardiac arrest.
If it's a manufacturing flaw, then Boeing is off the hook and they look good due to the limited damage caused. If it's an external problem, where the batteries are being utilized more than intended, then it indicates insufficient testing and/or new model growing pains and doesn't really indicate a significant problem at Boeing. If it's an overheat problem due to ignorance or post-testing/pre-production design changes, then it tends to reflect poorly on Boeing.
I guess we will only find out if Boeing volunteers the information.
Experts Sadoway and Elton Cairns "suggested that an active cooling system would provide an additional layer of safety for a cost that would be miniscule compared to other 787 sub-system costs. Sadoway again said last week that the Boeing batteries would be safer with active cooling. "That's what GM does in the Chevy Volt," he told us."
My first thought was weight. The Chevy Volt is a grounded vehicle that must generate enough electrical power to propel itself over pavement at a reasonable rate of speed...relatively slow compared to the 500+mph (ground speed) of a large commercial airline.
Like most other mechanical contraptions we've invented, turning electricity into power and power into motion is a big issue. The heavier the machine, the more power it takes to make it move. And thus more electricity. More batteries. More weight.
Wouldn't adding an active cooling system add considerable weight? And take up precious space?
It's been previously reported that the battery was not factory-original, that the battery that burned was replaced by the airline as part of maintenance.
The first 787 is barely one year old, and airlines are replacing batteries? Can you draw a parallel between 787 and a smart phone?
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