On the news they were talking about Tesla battery fires being really hard to put out. I thought, why couldn’t you just slide a fireproof fabric of some kind under the burning Tesla. Pull that sucker up, and vacuum seal it.
Basically, why aren’t fires put out more often by cutting off oxygen? It seems like the most effective way as opposed to dousing it with water or sand.
In: Physics
These exist but go over the car and make a seal with the ground
We have them In industry
they don’t need oxygen from the air. the battery has oxides in its construction that decompose into usable oxygen for a fire.
that said, fire blankets do exist and are used. this does little to extinguish a battery fire, but dramatically reduces the damage it can do to its surroundings and gives first responders more ways to deal with it.
You can smother a fire with a fireblanket, PROVIDED the fuel itself doesn’t contain enough oxygen to keep the fire going. If it does, the blanket isn’t going to achieve much.
Chemicals that can supply their own oxygen make this strategy ineffective. This is why it’s so hard to fight a fire in a fireworks factory and it’s why electric vehicle fires are impossible to put out once they start. Smothering them with sand is effectively the same as the blanket except sand is more heat resistant and has a lot of thermal mass. Spraying them with water doesn’t really do much
>Pull that sucker up, and vacuum seal it.
I’m going to guess you’ve never tried to make an air-tight seal with a blanket.
Interesting question! While cutting off oxygen is one way to extinguish a fire, it’s not always practical or safe. Plus, some fires (like electrical fires) can’t be put out this way. Firefighters use a variety of methods depending on the type and location of the fire. It’s a complex science!
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