How did it withdraw 1 million pounds of flammable lithium-ion battery from its burning areas

The fires that swept the County of Los Angeles in January left more than a million pounds of damaged lithium-ion battery, ranging from thin capsules inside iphones to brick-type blocks that manage electric vehicles.

Cheap and reliable lithium-ion batteries have helped the transition from the world to green energy, but have a major risk: when damaged, the batteries can become very hot very quickly, open in a puff of toxic and flammable gas and burst into flames that are difficult to turn off.

This level of risk has lent a new emergency to clean the Los Angeles fire debris. After being exposed to temperatures of more than 2,000 degrees, the thousands of lithium batteries left in the ruins of more than 13,500 houses and garages could have exploded or set fire to any time.

Lithium-ion batteries with thermal lesions are “very unpredictable,” said Keith Glenn, on-site coordinator of the American Environmental Protection. The workers who treat them, he said, sometimes wonder: “Will it take fire? Will it become a projectile?”

Lithium-ion batteries became the main cause of fire deaths in New York last year and are now a factor in half of the country’s van load fires. A fire of a portable battery swallowed an airplane on the Tarmac in South Korea in January, and American air security regulators say that lithium-ion battery fires occur almost twice a week.

Federal environmental officials are in the last days of an effort of several months to find the batteries and prevent them from causing fire, which implies scrutinizing the fire debris in hand, soaking the batteries in a specialized brine solution, then putting them in pieces for transport and recycling. It is a ugly end to power behind some of our most well-designed and beloved devices.

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Environmental workers have recovered more than 16 times more batteries from the Los Angeles fire wrecks than in the forest fires that swept Maui in 2023.

This volume does not only reflect the scope of damage here, but also the role of California as an early enthusiastic adopter of green technologies such as solar panels, electric vehicles and massive wall battery panels that accompany them.

All lithium-ion batteries work about the same way: the cells are grouped inside the battery case and lithium ions move between the electrodes in each cell, generating an electric current.

Batteries become a risk when they enter the thermal runnway, a state that can be triggered by overcharging, manufacturing errors or physical damage that can cause fires.

Keith Glenn crosses an EPA production area where the lithium-ion batteries, collected in the fire of the Palisades, are shredded in the parking lot of Will Rogers State Beach.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

“Just like rejecting this first domino … He can spread,” said Chris Myers, co-president of the national working group on emergency interventions of the EPA lithium-ion battery. If the batteries are not handled properly, the fires can rekindle “days, weeks,” later, he said. “This is what we are trying to prevent.”

In California, the greatest risks are often garages and streets. The intensity of electric vehicle fires can stop the highways for hours and sometimes prevent firefighters from saving the victims of cars crash.

They can also have significant economic impacts: last fall, a grand-rig wearing lithium-ion batteries overturned and caught fire in San Pedro, forcing the closure of several port terminals. About 1,200 people were ordered to evacuate in the county of Monterey earlier this year after one of the largest battery storage facilities in the world at the Moss landing center caught fire.

When the Biden administration has instructed the EPA to clean lithium-ion battery waste from Lahaina fire, the island geography posed a problem. There were no battery recycling centers on Maui, and captains and ship insurers, distrusting fire risks, did not want the goods damaged from their cargo.

“We were pushed into a situation where we had to understand it,” said Myers.

Thus, the EPA has developed what is now called the “MAUI method”, a two -part process to eliminate the stored power of batteries and crush them for a safe transport and recycling.

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In the County of Los Angeles, the process with high intensity of labor began by mapping the probable locations of more than 5,000 batteries, including approximately 2,000 in the Palisades and Malibu and 3,000 in Altadena. The list has been compiled with information from car and solar panels, public services, owners and the ministry of motor vehicles.

Then, hundreds of environmental workers went to the burning areas to scrutinize the wreckage, House by House, block by block.

The crews working on electric vehicles disconnected the tension cables to inflatable cushions and safety belts, saw the top of the cars and overturned the vehicles to access the batteries below. The detachment of the thousands of cells below and the loading of the batteries in metal drums could take up to two hours per car.

Los Angeles had a much larger range of electric vehicles than Maui, said Glenn, and each brand and model is a little different.

Lithium-ion batteries are paid into a shredder in a gathering area operated by the Environmental Protection Agency.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

The crews have also driven out the wall battery energy storage systems that connect to solar panels and electric cars. These devices, which weigh 200 pounds or more, were wrapped in fire blankets and transported by truck to a temporary EPA treatment site to dismantle.

The choice of EPA real estate, including parking lots by the sea and an open space in Irwindale, sparked fierce play reactions from residents who did not want toxic batteries shredded near their home or sensitive navigable lanes.

The member of the WestSide council, Traci Park, expressed his surprise earlier this year during a public meeting that the batteries were crushed “just in the open air”, not far from the water.

The EPA has installed barriers and raised layers of thick plastic to prevent the runoff from groundwater and used air quality monitors to ensure that battery dust, which contains precious and semi-precious metals, did not contaminate air. The agency tested the air and the ground before starting their operations, then again.

On the Will Rogers State Beach site, workers overwhelmed the batteries recovered in a salt salt solution and baking soda. The batteries have dipped for three days or more in containers in the shape of red garbage dumpster, sometimes emitting bubbles or a rust color discharge, to reduce their stored energy and reduce the risk of fire.

In the first weeks of cleaning the, the batteries were then crushed between a steel plate and a drum roll. The flattening of the contents of a drum of 55 gallons took 30 to 45 minutes in a process that an engineer compared to the crushing of peanuts in peanut butter.

The breakdown of anodes and battery cathodes reduces the batteries to the fact that EPA workers call, semi-seriously, “not a battery”. This makes the metal easier to transport and guarantees that the batteries will not rekindle.

The EPA abandoned the roller method at the end of March for a simpler solution: two bright blue machines that look like giant sausage grinders. The machines were made in New Jersey by an industrial manufacturer who also manufactures crushers for car lessons and 1-800 Got-Junk.

Will Rogers’ team has nicknamed the smallest machine “Pork Roll”, after popular transformed meat in the Garden State. About the size of a lawn mower, the machine chews approximately eight battery barrels an hour, eight times faster than the drum roll method.

The largest machine was even faster. During his first day of operation, while the waves of ocean crashed behind him, an EPA entrepreneur used a red lynx with a front claw to collect a metal drum and maintain it on the chute of the machine.

Barrels were on site for a possible storage of grated lithium-ion batteries with Will Rogers State Beach.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Another worker used a long post to scrape the batteries in the machine. The batteries fell between the teeth and fell from the bottom like a pile of scrap.

Non-batteries are shoveled in massive metal containers with soft summits and are trucked towards Grassy Mountain, a waste elimination installation in the Grand Lake Salt desert of UTAH, officials said. The battery salumage liquid is also dangerous waste and is transported by truck to another specialized installation, the agency said.

The MAUI method of the EPA will be used more and more because the Americans rely more on wireless devices, said Glenn, adding: “We love portability, we like to be without attachments.”