The Marine Industry, and wider world, urgently need an agreed standard for containers storing and charging Li-Ion batteries.
Although MCA have issued guidance (MGN681) on this issue, as have the Lloyds Joint Hull Committee, the combined guidance does not offer crew a clear way to proceed or to judge the safety of available products.
In addition, there is a real issue in the industry today with unscrupulous suppliers pushing safety products that cannot possibly function as claimed, as the container cannot contain the fireload of the batteries stored. While also offering false or miss-leading certifications that imply that it can.
A critical factor that seems to be overlooked in the industry is the concept of a safe battery fireload. Fireload is the total amount of combustible material in a given space, determining how fiercely and how long a fire will burn. So, in this case how many batteries can safely be stored in a container together?
As there are no international standards that govern container testing to a maximum fireload capacity, there is nothing to say what is a safe limit of batteries that can be stored or charged together.
In our opinion, crew need be very careful about storing and charging multiple batteries together despite what some container manufacturers claim, unless the container has been independently tested and certified specifically to be able to contain that amount of fireload in Thermal Runaway.
DMT TUV NORD have developed a test program (M02/22) that verifies containers for their ability to contain Explosion, Fire and Gas up to a specific kWh battery capacity or fireload during Thermal Runaway. Containers passing this test mean that crew can be sure that safety onboard is guaranteed up to the stated battery capacity.
We all need such test programs to be adopted as the industry standard to urgently raise safety standards and make it easier for crew and management to choose the right option.
