Reply to post: Re: "This strategy holds great promise for practical battery applications."

Re: "This strategy holds great promise for practical battery applications."

The user can also suffer serious long term injury or death in severe cases from a Lithium battery in thermal runaway due to the HF generated.

When you have a battery "fire" (ie, the amount of hydrogen being forced out through the hole in the top of the cell at pressure high enough to self ignite) then you also get other nasty stuff coming out of the battery cells such as fluorine. hydrogen + flourine = hydroflouric acid, which melts glass and is otherwise quite dangerous. From the small print in the Material Safety Data Sheet:-

"Hydrofluoric acid is extremely corrosive. Contact with hydrogen fluoride fumes is to be avoided. Permissible exposure limit is 3 parts per million. In case of contact with hydrogen fluoride fumes, immediately leave the area and seek first aid and emergency medical attention. Symptoms may have delayed onset. Fluoride ions penetrate skin readily causing destruction of deep tissue layers and even bone. Fluoride interferes with nerve impulse conduction causing severe pain or absence of sensations."

A cautionary tale is here, which is equally applicable to many of us who deal with things such as laptops that catch fire through battery fires (releasing HF in the smoke):-

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?141137-Inhaled-vapors-from-battery!!!

I'm fully in favour of every possible safety precaution that human ingenuity can devise when dealing with something this nasty!