Comment by Spooky23
6 hours ago
My company distributed buckets filled with cat litter for containment to every branch office.
We cut the rate of fire (already low) in half by containing compromised batteries. It’s something like 0.02%-0.03% which is significant given the massive scope. Something like 200k devices and about 3% with battery issues of all types.
When you think about the number of flights, passengers with lithium batters and challenges of the airplane environment, it’s a hard problem. We’re lucky the engineering around these devices are as good as it is.
Kitty litter is not a bad choice for a class D metal fire but make sure you have the correct type. You want the stuff made out of bentonite clay, not the stuff made out of grain byproducts.
https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/4/15/when-kitty-litt...
Sorry i should have been more precise. It's some sort of enterprise kitty litter, which is probably the material you reference and costs about 5x kitty litter. ;)
I am pretty much sacred by amount of stuff I have at home that does have lithium batteries.
I try not to keep any in drawers but possibly in one open place and having fire blanket close to that stand.
Fire blanket would not help much for thermal runaway but I guess it would be better than nothing for containment or at least getting that one away from all the other batteries so they don’t chain react.
Is there anything special about cat litter? Or just cheap and abundant?
The common clumping litters are usually some form of clay, dried to remove moisture. It's about as nonflammable as things come and lighter than undried clay.