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Mahesh

08/01/25 17:23 PM IST

Airline pilots’ body calls attention to lithium battery fire risk

In News
  • Recently, the International Federation of Air Line Pilots’ Associations (IFALPA) issued three position papers on the fire risk due to the use of lithium-ion batteries in airport and aircraft settings.
About IFALPA
  • IFALPA is a global nonprofit representing the international community of professional pilots.
  • After World War II, the United Nations established the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in 1947 to coordinate air transport and its principles worldwide.
  • A year later, ICAO organised a conference in London where pilots could interact with its leaders. IFALPA was born at this event with 13 pilots’ associations.
  • IFALPA encompassed 104 member associations representing one lakh professional pilots worldwide around 2013.
  •  IFALPA also provides inputs to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the Airports Council International, and the International Federation of Air Traffic Controllers’ Association.
Concerns about Lithium batteries
  • Almost every major industry in the world is mechanised to a significant degree, and the energy for these machines has traditionally been produced by burning fossil fuels.
  • As climate mitigation has become more pressing, industries are under pressure to replace this thermal energy — the principal cause of global warming — with electric energy.
  • For example, EVs draw electric energy from a battery to drive an electric motor and supply kinetic energy to the wheels.
  • In an internal combustion engine, heat energy released by burning fossil fuels moves pistons, whose motion is converted to rotary motion of the wheels.
  • Lithium-ion batteries have emerged as a popular solution to storing electric energy because they are energy-dense, rechargeable, and can be made in almost any shape, which is useful when there are space constraints as onboard an aircraft.
  • But lithium-ion batteries have been known to catch fire when they are subjected to certain physical stresses.
  • The fire is the result of the stress creating a short-circuit inside the battery, leaving it to keep producing electric current, heat, and oxygen – an event called thermal runaway.
  • The battery’s internal components can become corroded while the risk of catching fire increases.
  • The short circuit can be the result of mechanical, electric, and/or thermal abuse, which respectively deform the internal structure, degrade its electric performance, and cause heat to accumulate.
Source- The Hindu

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