Dreamliner's Thermal Runaway Lithium-Ion Battery Problems

If you have trouble keeping up with the wide array of stories cascading constantly in the press -- think Syrian Revolution; think bank settlement deal that ended the review of foreclosed loans -- it is a relief when one stumbles across a little gem like the one I did this morning on page B2 of Business Day in the New York Times.

Written by Hiroko Tabuchi and Christopher Drew it provides a thumbnail sketch of the grounding of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner due to a tendency of "thermal runaway" in its lithium-ion battery.

This is a story that has been big news in the Puget Sound region. The main Dreamliner production facility is in Everett. Prior to the battery combustion last month -- a fire in Boston followed by smoking in Japan and then the FAA-ordered grounding -- reports in the local press were heralding a hiring surge by Boeing.

The last six paragraphs of the story by Tabuchi and Drew bring one uptodate on a month's worth of reporting:

Ms. Hersman [National Traffic Safety Board chairwoman] said Thursday that American investigators still did not know what caused the short-circuit in the cell of the battery in the Boston jet. She also said that in certifying the lithium-ion batteries in 2007, the Federal Aviation Administration accepted test results from Boeing that seriously underestimated the risk of smoke or fire.

The 787 is the first commercial plane to use large lithium-ion batteries for major flight functions. The batteries are more volatile than conventional nickel-cadmium batteries, but they weigh less and create more power, contributing to a 20 percent gain in fuel economy over older planes.

All 50 of the 787s that have been delivered so far have been grounded since mid-January.

That has also stopped Boeing from delivering more of the planes. Two European carriers, Thomson Airways and Norwegian Air Shuttle, said Friday that Boeing had notified them that the deliveries they had expected soon would be delayed.

Boeing’s rival, Airbus, plans to use smaller — and it says safer — lithium-ion batteries in its next-generation A350 jets, which will compete with the 787. Airbus reiterated Friday that it was watching to see how the investigations of the Boeing battery turned out. 

“There is nothing that prevents us from going back to a classical battery on the A350, which we’ve been studying in parallel to the lithium battery from the beginning,” said Justin Dubon, an Airbus spokesman in Toulouse, France.

Boeing has a lot riding on the 787. It says a lot about the incompatibility of wise decision making and plutocratic capture.