– On the 15th and 16th, the real electric vehicle fire was reenacted at the Seoul Fire School in collaboration with related organizations.
– Electric vehicle fires are difficult to extinguish, such as battery thermal runaway. Searching for various firefighting measures
– Plan to produce and distribute manuals and videos based on analysis of experimental data in the future
□ The Seoul Fire and Disaster Headquarters announced on the 16th (Thursday) that 'in order to come up with effective fire suppression and lifesaving measures in consideration of the increasing trend of fires related to the spread of electric vehicles, we conducted an electric vehicle fire reenactment experiment'.
□ This fire reenactment experiment was characterized by applying various firefighting methods in consideration of the characteristics of electric vehicle fires.
□ According to the National Fire Agency, a total of 1 electric vehicle fires occurred in Korea during the four years from 25 to 2017, with the cumulative number of registered electric vehicles exceeding 2020 units by the first quarter of this year.
□ Recently, on the 4th, an electric car running from Namhae Expressway in Busan toward Changwon collided with a shock absorber at a tollgate and caught fire, killing two people, including the driver.
□ Electric vehicle fires, unlike general internal combustion engine vehicle fires, do not extinguish in the usual way when a 'battery thermal runaway' phenomenon occurs, so various methods for extinguishing fires have been suggested.
□ The Fire and Disaster Headquarters used an electric vehicle provided by Hyundai Motor Group to reproduce a fire in practice, measure data in detail, and experimented with various fire suppression methods.
□ The fire suppression method applied in the experiment is: ▸ Cooling fire extinguishing by mass waterproofing ▸ Waterproofing after installing a suffocation fire extinguisher cover ▸ Firefighting using a cooling water tank.
□ Relevant organizations participating in the experiment first measured the thermal runaway phenomenon of lithium batteries and the resulting temperature at each stage of the fire through the 'Electric Vehicle Fire Characteristics Confirmation Test' from fire ignition to natural fire extinguishing.
□ In the 'Cooling Fire Extinguishing Experiment by Mass Waterproofing', which was conducted in succession, it was tested how large amounts of waterproofed water act on fire suppression when thermal runaway occurs in lithium batteries and whether the internal combustion engine vehicle rescue technique can be applied to electric vehicles.
□ In addition to the recently devised suffocation cover method to effectively extinguish electric vehicle fires, the firefighting method using a cooling water tank for electric vehicle fire suppression was also tested and the effectiveness was measured.
□ Meanwhile, the Fire and Disaster Headquarters plans to compile the data and test results obtained through this experiment to produce and distribute manuals and videos so that they can be utilized not only by the Seoul Fire Department but also by other local governments.
□ Choi Tae-young, head of the Seoul Metropolitan Fire and Disaster Headquarters, said, “As the supply of electric vehicles becomes common due to the fourth industrial revolution, a solution to safety is also needed.” .
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