🔥 Lithium battery fire

serious

Where you meet it: Phone and laptop boards · tablets · tools · vapes · key fobs · CMOS coin cells on motherboards and RAID cards

What you need to know

Remove every lithium cell before any hot work, crushing or shredding.
Puncturing, crushing or overheating a Li-ion cell triggers thermal runaway: self-sustaining, propagates cell to cell, reignites hours later, and releases hydrogen fluoride and other toxic gases.
Never pry a swollen pouch cell with a metal tool. Never bridge terminals with metal tweezers.
Store removed cells at partial charge, terminals taped, in a metal container, away from combustibles. Take them to a battery recycler.
Have a plan: dry sand, a metal drum, or the ability to move the item outdoors.

The rule: A standard ABC extinguisher will NOT stop a runaway lithium cell. Don't count on one.

Components this applies to

Silver-Oxide Button Cells Other · $40–120/lb Ag ~30–35% by weight ≈ 150 g/lbBase Zn anode ~25%Base LR/AG alkaline S Cell phone boards Boards · $25–40/lb Au 0.09–0.50 g/lbAg 0.23–1.26 g/lbPd 0.025–0.07 g/lbCu 12–56% A Laptop motherboards Boards · $10–18/lb Au 0.20–0.50 g/lbAg 1–3 g/lbPd 0.02–0.08 g/lbCu 15–25% B Arcade PCBs / JAMMA Boards Boards · $30–800/lb Au 0.05–0.20 g per board ≈ 0.09 g/lbCu ~45 g/lbAu ceramic gold-lid customs (FD1094 C Backup batteries & Dallas RTC modules ☠ ICs & chips · $50–800/lb Cu ~40 g/lbAu <0.1 g/lb C Desktop motherboards Boards · $5–12/lb Au 0.02–0.15 g/lbAg 0.6–2 g/lbPd 0.01–0.05 g/lbCu 15–20% C Enterprise Switches, Line Cards & Optics Boards · $3–200/lb Au 0.15–0.6 g per large line card ≈ 0.075 g/lbCu ~70 g/lbBase chassis backplane C EV / hybrid battery management boards Automotive · $5–15/lb Au 0.01–0.05 g per master boardAg ~0.1 g per master boardCu 10–50 g busbar traces per cell-tap board C Industrial Control Boards (PLC/DCS/SCADA) Boards · $3–12/lb Au 0.05–0.20 g/lb typical I/O; 0.25–0.60 g/lb CPU and backplanes; 0.6–1.5 g/lb 1970s–80s ceramic-DIP DCSAg 1–8 g per relay moduleCu ~113 g/lb C Console Game Cartridges Boards · $10–150/lb Au 0.003–0.015 g per cartridge ≈ 0.04 g/lb wholeAu 0.6–0.9 g/lb of trimmed fingersCu negligible D Laser Printer Boards, Fusers & Toner Chips Boards · $10–60/lb Au 0.01–0.04 g per formatter board ≈ 0.045 g/lbAu 0.0005–0.002 g per toner CRUM chip ≈ 0.3–0.8 g/lb of chipsBase Fuser: no precious metal whatsoever D Tape Drives & Libraries (LTO/DLT/DAT) Drives & media · $5–500/lb Au 0.05–0.20 g per LTO drive ≈ 0.03 g/lbCu ~10 g/lbBase 0.7–1.8 kg aluminium per full-height drive D

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