Fighting lithium fires

Lithium fires are particularly nasty. Depending on the kind of Lithium battery, water may or may not help.

Lithium batteries one will find in most handheld items; cell phones, laptops, tablets, and the like - do not have enough lithium in them to react with water so dunking them in water (or soda or whatever water-based liquid is handy) will help. This simply cools the battery so the reaction causing the fire will slow or stop. Using a regular fire extinguisher is not a bad idea, either.

There are other lithium batteries, perhaps bigger batteries that one might find in EV's or grid batteries, that have enough lithium in them that spraying water on them, or dunking them in water, will not have the desired effect because the lithium will react with the water. These are generally called Lithium Metal batteries. Reacting with water won't make things better and might make things worse, but to put fires out around a Lithium Metal battery is what water can be used for, so if water is all that is available, use it.

So in the case of a burning lithium metal battery, one should use a class D fire extinguisher. A class D fire extinguisher is for reactive metal fires and should not be used on other types of fires.

That being said, there are a couple new products out there just to help with this new first world problem.

A company called Spectrum FX is making a fire extinguisher that they say uses "Firebane" technology that they describe thusly:

Firebane® is biodegradable and human friendly. The agent has been accepted by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a replacement for Halon and listed on the Significant New Alternative Policy List (SNAP). As an Aqueous-based agent it is now included in the FAA AC 120-80A as a firefighting tool that can be used on commercial aircraft. Firebane is the only known Aqueous- based agent that also has Class D fire ratings.

Specifically formulated for the use in aircraft at very low temperatures, Firebane has a Pour Point at > 63 Celceus and is Soluble in Water.

 Spectrum sells this and other aircraft ready fire suppression kits. They also have a "fire sock" which is like a pouch to put a burning item into to contain it. Obviously, it comes with fire resistant gloves to get the object into the pouch.

There is another company, Viking Packing Specialist, that makes a fire pouch called AvSax.

And undoubtedly there will be companies that can offer the kind of solutions we'll need to deal with the problem of burning lithium batteries. Even if the problem might, for the most part, go away with safer chemistries.