169 - Engineering car parks for EV's with Ali Ashrafi and Pawel Woelke

WEBVTT

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Hello everybody, welcome to the Fire Science Show.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>In the Fire Science Show I really like to talk to fellow fire safety engineers about how do they solve their problems, and it's fun because the problems are usually the same in my country, in my location, and the same in the places where my guests come from.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>But the methods, tools that we use to solve those problems, solve those issues, are usually different, and I love to learn from fellow fire safety engineers because this gives me inspiration and breadth of knowledge that helps me solve my own issues, and that's the idea for inviting more fire safety engineers into the podcast and finding topics that unite us, topics that are challenging worldwide and that we all have to figure out together.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>One of such topics is fire safety of car parks.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>In relation to the electric vehicle hazards, a few months ago we had a phase two report from NFPA on modern vehicle hazards.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>We had a lot of research, some papers published over the last two, three years that shed new life into the problem of fire safety of electric vehicles.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I had brilliant guests in the podcast, such as Professor Peter Sturm, who's burned electric vehicles in a tunnel, and I can probably say we have also participated in some experiments on electric vehicles, which will reach the daylight in some time I hope sooner than later.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So I clearly see the knowledge base is growing and I also feel that the focus moves away from electric vehicles more towards scooters, which obviously seem to be more immediate hazard to tackle by the fire safety engineering community, or perhaps energy storage, which also is very, very interesting.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Nowadays I think I see that electric vehicles and hazards related to them became some sort of a normal thing in the modern world of fire safety engineering, which is great.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>That's a sign that the field is maturing, that we have more solutions to work with, that we have gained enough experience to handle those topics.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Just as another topic and yeah, this is what I want to extract from my guests I've invited two colleagues from Torrenton to Massetti.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>You've heard them previously in the podcast.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>One is Alia Shraffi, he's a principal, and the second one is Pavel Volker.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>He's a senior principal and applied science practice co-leader at Torrenton Tomasetti, and they've been on a podcast talked about energy storage, and today I'm going to pick their brains on how do they approach issues with car parks which are supposed to store battery-powered vehicles.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So I guess that's enough for an introduction.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Let's spin the intro and jump into the episode.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Welcome to the Firesize Show.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>My name is Wojciech Wigrzynski and I will be your host.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>This podcast is brought to you in collaboration with OFR Consultants.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Ofr is the UK's leading fire risk consultancy.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Its globally established team has developed a reputation for preeminent fire engineering expertise, with colleagues working across the world to help protect people, property and environment.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Established in the UK in 2016 as a startup business of two highly experienced fire engineering consultants, the business has grown phenomenally in just seven years, with offices across the country in seven locations, from Edinburgh to Bath, and now employing more than a hundred professionals.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Colleagues are on a mission to continually explore the challenges that fire creates for clients and society, applying the best research, experience and diligence for effective, tailored fire safety solutions.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>In 2024, ofr will grow its team once more and is always keen to hear from industry professionals who would like to collaborate on fire safety futures this year.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Get in touch at ofrconsultantscom.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Hello everybody, I am joined today by Ali Ashrafi.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Hey Ali, good to have you back in the podcast.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Absolutely, love to be back.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And once again, paweł Woli hey Ali, good to have you back in the podcast.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Absolutely, love to be back.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And once again, paweł Wolka, hello Paweł, hi Bartek, great to be here again.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Welcome back to the podcast, guys.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And the last time we were talking about energy storage facilities, and today I'm going to pull you further on the topic of electrifying our buildings.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And then this time we'll be talking about electric vehicles, something that everyone in the fire science community loves.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>We, I guess, learned to live with them so far, but it's not that we have solved the challenges in the design and, of course, everyone tries to deal with them the best they can.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So let's give people some ideas and solutions and let's talk it over.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I'm really happy to do that.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>For a starting point, what's the situation in the US?

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>How does it grow the EV market and, let's say, the knowledge of the designers and how to include them in their design?

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Looking back, I don't know 2016, 17, 19,.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Do you see big differences how we approach those today?

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<v Ali Ashrafi>You know, if I were to start, I'm starting at the beginning of your question.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>I think that you know it's to a large degree driven by sales of EV vehicles in the US and that has stalled somewhat over the last number of years, two years or so.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>You know, I won't venture into the reasons behind it, but I think it's a temporary thing, temporary situation.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>So it will pick back up and then the electrification of transportation will proceed along the lines of EVs specifically and then for the longer range heavy haul vehicles it's probably going to be hydrogen drivencar parking in a variety of urban areas, especially urban areas, in parking garages that are basically multi-car park storage facilities.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>So that's one aspect that we see a lot of and the other one has to do with stationary energy storage type that basically supports grid, so it's not EV-related.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>Obviously these are, like I said, stationary energy storage systems, but there's a lot of those in and around large urban areas as well and they present similar challenges of course more energy, similar density, but more energy basically located in one place.

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<v Pawel Woelke>And I would add that we have certainly a lot more consciousness of the issues and questions.

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<v Pawel Woelke>There are a lot more people that are thinking about this issue.

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<v Pawel Woelke>As you know, in the US, everywhere, codes are usually slow to catch up to evolving technology right, and the same is true in the US, and so I don't think the codes have changed as much as the questions and the nature of things that clients ask us and we look at in a design context.

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<v Pawel Woelke>So if you're looking at prescriptive code requirements, there hasn't been as much change as when we look at it from an engineering perspective and try to come up with actual engineering-based solutions.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Okay, and reading the emotions of the room some years ago, I felt the problem is very emotional, even up to the point of hysteria.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>You know we're going to have EVs in our car parks.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>How do we deal?

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>At this point, I believe we're more talking about engineered solutions and real problems based on, finally, data, and this helps us craft solutions.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Did you have the same feeling that the problem was very like medial emotional some years ago and now have changed into much more technical discourse, or is it still something you observe in US?

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<v Ali Ashrafi>I don't know that.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>I feel that the discussion was very emotional in the US, ever really Okay.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>I think it was one of those examples where there was no issue and then there was an issue, okay, and you know, I guess that may be a characteristic of the way US economy operates.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>There's a need for a solution, okay, and you know, I guess that may be a characteristic of the way US economy operates where there's a need for a solution, a solution gets developed and people are very pragmatic about it.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>So I don't really feel that the discussion was all that emotional.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>It is certainly practical right now and focused on solutions.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>I don't know that there is a sufficient awareness yet of the cost of these solutions or basically the types of the problems that we're dealing with, the nature of the problems, the nature of the hazard and then the cost of developing solutions.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>I think there's an appreciation that the solutions are passable and that's increasing, but I think that the appreciation of the cost associated with it is lacking a little bit behind.

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<v Pawel Woelke>And to rephrase your question, I would say maybe a few years ago the questions were not as well understood and well defined, so people knew that there's some issue.

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<v Pawel Woelke>They didn't know what the right questions are, and now we have better understanding of that.

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<v Pawel Woelke>Certainly there's a lot more data out there so you can have a much more informed and detailed conversation.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Yeah, for me in Poland at least, the discussion was very emotional.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>It was like EV fires were the headline topic of newspapers and I believed the fear for the big fires that come with EVs came here before the EVs even came vehicle sales.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Already you already had a big fleet of vehicles that you could refer to.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I mean, if you have a fire, having half a million electric vehicles in the US, that feels completely different than when we have a fire in Poland, or we see a fire and we have 50 of them or 100 or 1000, even.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>You know, I see that this perhaps was the driver.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And to understand the infrastructure multi-car park storage facilities, how they are built in the US Are they typically separate structures?

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Are they built as a part of other developments, underground, overground, all of above?

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<v Ali Ashrafi>All of the above.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>Okay, it's very dependent on the specific developer, specific solution.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>Some of them exist and they're just going through conversion, where there's an increasing percentage of the vehicles that will be EVs or at least chargeable stations or spots, parking spots, so you've got all kinds.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>Basically, obviously, the ones that exist that are underground and not ventilated are the most challenging, but a lot of it, as to going into the solutions, or even the desire or the need for solution, goes back to who owns them.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>What is the sort of risk profile of that particular owner or risk appetite of that particular owner vis-a-vis code requirements, which don't necessarily impose on you any strict demands as to what you should do.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>So some owners will choose not to do anything because they don't have to.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>But, like I said, as far as the types that you're seeing, you've got everything that you've mentioned as far as coming up, and the new ones obviously create a bit of a more opportunity to address the issue up front, as Ali mentioned earlier, to apply a holistic sort of viewpoint to the solution and design them with the hazard in mind, as opposed to do sort of a mitigation after the fact.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>But the existing ones are calm online, so to speak sooner or later, simply because of the progressing fleet electrification.

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<v Pawel Woelke>And, if you want to think of it, compared to Europe, we have a little more space in the US.

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<v Pawel Woelke>And so there are a lot more places where you have room to have a dedicated parking facility in the suburbs or, you know, less populated areas.

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<v Pawel Woelke>If you go in dense urban areas, of course you don't have that space, and then it becomes a mixed-use building that has a parking space and then you have a building above that.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Yeah, and you've also mentioned the legislation has not followed the developments.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Do you have any legislation related to having the spaces for electric vehicles?

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>For example, in Poland we have new technical regulations for buildings that define how much electrical power has to be connected to a new development, how many charging points you shall have per X number of spots, and so on.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So in that case, like requiring to design with EVs in mind already came here, but, as you said, the fire considerations are not yet part of that.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So we've already our law already includes for EVs, just not for the risk management of the EV fires.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>Yeah, we have a similar situation, except that it's not at the federal level.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>So you have basically requirements that exist on a state by state level.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>So they obviously vary from state to state and also municipalities.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>So, again, there's probably a bit of a lighter touch in terms of mandating things for a number of specific EV-capable spots, so to speak, but they do exist.

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<v Pawel Woelke>And part of that is and I'm sure we'll get more into that if you want to mandate a specific type of solution, for example, to some extent you want to know what you want to mandate and enough of those designs should be done where you converge to that.

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<v Pawel Woelke>As opposed to if you want to be more performance-based and say, consider these things in design, you can, you have more room, but the US system is starting from a point of prescriptive.

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<v Pawel Woelke>So you can do performance-based design but compared to the US, it's a lot more prescriptive design as a starting point.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Okay, let's try with defining.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>We've used the word hazard a few times.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Let's try defining hazards related to EV vehicles.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I guess we can.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Let's, for the purpose of this discussion, consider the internal combustion engine as the normal hazards.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>You know whatever that would mean, and let's try to distill what the new hazards would be like.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>What changes when you bring EVs into your mix of vehicles in your parking space?

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So perhaps you could try outlining the differences.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Well, that's a hard one.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>I mean I think that it's worth saying at a high level that we have decades of safety research into the fire hazards of internal combustion engine vehicles.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>The ignition source, in terms of heat, and the fuel are separated quite a distance away.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>There's a lot of other safety features.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>We basically know what we're dealing with because we've been dealing with this for more than decades it's hundreds of years.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>At this point, obviously, evs are new and they create tremendous advantage from the point of view of simplicity of the vehicle built and construction.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>But to outline the hazards, with highlighting the points of departure, so to speak, from internal combustion engine, you obviously have a fire hazard in EV just as much as you do in an internal combustion engine.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>You also have an explosive hazard which technically could exist in an internal combustion engine vehicle, but it's basically taken care of as in it has been addressed through those safety features.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>And then you've got toxicity hazard in EV, which is also unique.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>So I would say explosive hazard and toxicity hazard are new to EVs.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>And going back to the fire, there's just sort of a binary description of fire.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>The fires are different, as we all know, so it may look if you look at the heat release rate.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>The internal combustion engine and EV look similar and you know, in both cases most of the fuel for the fire is actually given by the internals of the vehicle plastics and things like that as opposed to the actual powertrain fuel, be it gasoline or energy stored in batteries.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>But it's how that combustion chemistry actually progresses.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>That's where the differences are.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>So I would say there's a significant difference in the fire hazard between ICE and EV, and then there's explosion and toxicity in EV, which is unique to those types of vehicles.

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<v Pawel Woelke>And let me add one thing here.

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<v Pawel Woelke>So if you're dealing with situations where you have, let's say, one car and that's an easy problem to deal with and it's EVs want to make a big difference, big picture, in what the hazard is and how you're managing that, ultimately, a lot of times there's a car.

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<v Pawel Woelke>They come and isolate the risk and they might let it burn.

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<v Pawel Woelke>It's actually a better solution, but it's not a big game changer.

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<v Pawel Woelke>I think the one place where you have more of these cars close to each other not on the risk side yet, but just on the hazard side the hazard which depends on how the fire propagates from one car to multiple cars does also depend on what we do in design and what the response to it is.

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<v Pawel Woelke>So, for example, if you have a situation where there's a protocol and there's accidents and the fire department can come in and control that much more easily, or you've detected it faster, you can act on the hazard in a way that mitigates as much faster than if you don't have those situations.

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<v Pawel Woelke>So that's a place where the hazard side is not given and then we're trying to just come up with a solution.

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<v Pawel Woelke>The hazard also depends on what the response to it is.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So I would like to come back to Pavel saying that the heat release rate would look the same.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>By that you mean, like the total energy release in the fire or the peak heat release rate would be ballpark similar at the peak right.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>So not the same.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>Just a slight caveat similar, yeah, and I would say the total energy.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>So the former, similar, the peak is going to look different.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>Peak is going to be higher in the case of ev and that peak is, as peaks tend to be relatively short-lived, but it has a tendency to be quite a bit higher than for internal combustion energy.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>That, the the energy, is a relevant question because, like, like I said, the bulk of the energy that is provided to the fire is internal elements, plastics and things like that.

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<v Ali Ashrafi>So the energy is going to look similar.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Okay.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So we just went through your literature review, which is in the review stage, you know.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>But also looking through the research, we also found some interesting artifacts of how those things are tested.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So what we found in our research is that, looking over all the published data you can find on the internet, when people test those electric vehicles the focus is obviously towards battery, because that's the interesting part, right.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So they go very heavy abused ignition sources like nailed through the battery as the ignition, or just two megawatt heptane fire underneath the car, which I don't think is a very realistic scenario.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So the way how the tests are carried are very battery ignition oriented, whereas in the same, let's say, decade, the last 10, 15 years, when we saw tests of internal combustion engine vehicles, we've seen more attempts of ignition, like through the tire or through the interior.

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<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So I shared your opinion, pavel, that the numbers look similar or ballpark, they are near to each other.

00:17:59.426 --> 00:18:35.589
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>But I also see some artifacts of the way how we test and also the trends, like we're testing more and more electric vehicles because this gets you published, you know, this is the interesting part and less and less tests of internal combustion vehicles, and both types of vehicles get heavier, which means more plastics, exactly, yeah, so also, you know, comparing 2020 ev to a 2005 internal combustion vehicle, if you take battery away, if you take petrol tank away, there could be like 200 kilograms of plastic difference, which is significant.

00:18:35.810 --> 00:18:37.843
<v Ali Ashrafi>Yeah, so it's actually so.

00:18:37.843 --> 00:18:42.252
<v Ali Ashrafi>There are numerous studies that compare the size of the vehicle EV versus internal combustion engine.

00:18:42.252 --> 00:18:45.549
<v Ali Ashrafi>They both increase, have been increasing in size, just as you said.

00:18:45.549 --> 00:18:55.026
<v Ali Ashrafi>And then EV is about 20, on average about 20% heavier, which has to do with the weight of the batteries, but volume they have both been increasing.

00:18:55.026 --> 00:18:59.063
<v Ali Ashrafi>So that's one aspect that confirms what you said as well.

00:18:59.063 --> 00:19:01.449
<v Ali Ashrafi>That came up in some of our reviews, literature reviews.

00:19:02.030 --> 00:19:10.755
<v Ali Ashrafi>The other element that's interesting is there's a significant amount of noise, like you said, in the data right, because a lot of people test it with a specific objective and you get that objective.

00:19:10.755 --> 00:19:21.815
<v Ali Ashrafi>You don't necessarily get a full picture and the fact that there's still a limited amount of data that exists, especially of controlled tests, which I'll get to in a second, creates this uncertainty, significant uncertainty.

00:19:21.815 --> 00:19:32.759
<v Ali Ashrafi>The tests are not very well repeatable, because if you test the system like a car the entire system then you don't really have a fully controlled environment the entire system then you don't really have a fully controlled environment.

00:19:32.759 --> 00:19:49.625
<v Ali Ashrafi>You can control certain environments, but you really need to get into an element level or subsystem level to fully control the environment and have repeatability in the test, and that is currently lacking, because everybody's, like you said, very excited about testing the system and you know there's just too many parameters to control to make it a repeatable test, right, so it just doesn't really help.

00:19:49.625 --> 00:20:00.471
<v Ali Ashrafi>That said, you know, kind of separating the power train, separating the battery itself and then the fuel tank in the internal combustion engine.

00:20:00.471 --> 00:20:15.028
<v Ali Ashrafi>There are studies that go back to the 60s of both vehicles and buses that basically give you the idea of what the energy release is going to be in the fire of a bus or a vehicle, without consideration of the fuel itself, just burning the internals, burning the tires, burning the internals.

00:20:15.640 --> 00:20:30.365
<v Ali Ashrafi>So we have an estimate of those kinds of things, a variety of different vehicles, based on old tests, and those are fairly consistent, right, because you remove the most uncertain element, which in this case is a battery, and you have a picture basically of what it is.

00:20:30.365 --> 00:20:36.688
<v Ali Ashrafi>And based on those sort of comparisons, we obviously try to do, I'm going to say, a comparative analysis.

00:20:36.688 --> 00:20:39.528
<v Ali Ashrafi>Right, because it's not an additive analysis, it's not superposition.

00:20:39.528 --> 00:21:06.544
<v Ali Ashrafi>Obviously it doesn't work over here, but when you start quote unquote adding those elements, the fire of the internal elements of the vehicle, whatever the type of vehicle you're talking about and its energy release rate and again, in addition to I'm going to say in addition to use loosely here in quotation marks to what the energy is of the fire within the battery, fire off the battery, in comparison to internal combustion engine.

00:21:06.544 --> 00:21:18.819
<v Ali Ashrafi>And that's where my statement comes from in terms of saying that the majority of the energy is actually coming from the internals of the car, I would say significantly in comparison to the energy that's coming from a burning battery.

00:21:19.140 --> 00:21:31.182
<v Pawel Woelke>I don't know if you've seen it, but NFPA, just a few months ago, released a second phase study where they're looking at, basically, hazards of modern vehicles and it parallels our conversation of modern vehicles and it parallels our conversation.

00:21:31.182 --> 00:21:37.786
<v Pawel Woelke>So there are a lot of similar themes between vehicles, whether they're electric or not, and some of them are, as we talked about.

00:21:37.786 --> 00:21:41.647
<v Pawel Woelke>The cars have just gotten larger, more plastic to burn.

00:21:41.647 --> 00:21:45.410
<v Pawel Woelke>They're larger, so now they're like when they're parked next to each other they're actually closer to each other.

00:21:45.410 --> 00:21:47.672
<v Pawel Woelke>So it impacts propagation, for example.

00:21:47.672 --> 00:21:49.452
<v Pawel Woelke>Right, so big picture.

00:21:49.452 --> 00:22:10.481
<v Pawel Woelke>When we look at all the variety in the data that you get because of just the changes in the size of the cars, the amount of fuel that you might have, how the ignition will start, whether it's EV or not in each of them, and you look at all of that, evs and combustion engine cars end up being in the same ballpark when you're looking at them as an individual car.

00:22:10.481 --> 00:22:16.313
<v Pawel Woelke>So it's really when you're looking at a system and inside an enclosed area where you start to see the difference.

00:22:16.353 --> 00:22:17.962
<v Ali Ashrafi>That's a very interesting point.

00:22:17.962 --> 00:22:18.928
<v Ali Ashrafi>I'll just be specific.

00:22:18.928 --> 00:22:22.240
<v Ali Ashrafi>It's NFPA 13, which deals with design of the sprinkler system.

00:22:22.240 --> 00:22:29.643
<v Ali Ashrafi>Okay, that updated the rules and EVs are mentioned in the context of new cars in terms of their size.

00:22:29.643 --> 00:22:36.348
<v Ali Ashrafi>So it's an increasing size, increasing amount of plastics in the car that basically drives new requirements for sprinkler design.

00:22:36.348 --> 00:22:44.834
<v Ali Ashrafi>They're not driven and nfp admits that by ev consideration, ev or battery fire consideration specifically, and then that's not.

00:22:44.834 --> 00:22:46.143
<v Ali Ashrafi>Again they get nfp.

00:22:46.143 --> 00:22:48.410
<v Ali Ashrafi>The problem is difficult and they're trying as best they can.

00:22:48.871 --> 00:22:49.923
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>It's just a difficult problem.

00:22:49.923 --> 00:22:52.333
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Good, good, good, uh, and I like.

00:22:52.333 --> 00:23:01.730
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Well, of course, in Europe we have a kind of different vehicular trends than you guys have in the US and I know that there are those very large pickup trucks.

00:23:01.730 --> 00:23:05.827
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I've heard about electrical Humvee that must be like a massive fire source.

00:23:05.827 --> 00:23:12.567
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Is this also affecting your procedures, this different fleet that you have in the US?

00:23:13.089 --> 00:23:13.530
<v Ali Ashrafi>Absolutely.

00:23:13.530 --> 00:23:20.279
<v Ali Ashrafi>I mean you look at a facility, whatever the facility, parking facility might be, and you have to evaluate the type of cars that are coming.

00:23:20.279 --> 00:23:40.644
<v Ali Ashrafi>And you know we obviously, when we run analyses like this, dtap analyses like this, like these, we don't focus on a vehicle but we usually look at the range, we look at the traffic data within this location and then basically determine the offending vehicle as a source and the offending vehicle has to do with the whole thing.

00:23:40.644 --> 00:23:51.363
<v Ali Ashrafi>So basically, the body that it has, the amount of energy that it stores and then in its internal plastics that add, to add the fuel to the fire, basically I had to ask about a huge american vehicle.

00:23:51.383 --> 00:24:02.329
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Sorry guys, but it's interesting, like for me as a european, I would love to burn a humvee, like I just wonder if I just wonder if 20 megawatt food is sufficient enough to handle the beast.

00:24:02.329 --> 00:24:07.307
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Okay, the, the heat release rates, let's say, are similar, but there are nuances as well.

00:24:07.307 --> 00:24:13.182
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So since the beginning of the ev considerations, we were worried about the jet flames from the EVs.

00:24:13.182 --> 00:24:16.991
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>This, from my perspective, have different kinetics in two ways.

00:24:16.991 --> 00:24:25.365
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>In one way, you shoot fire for a larger distance, but also the fire has higher velocity, which impacts the conductive heat transfer.

00:24:25.365 --> 00:24:35.423
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And from the smoke control perspective, that's also completely different entrainment than the buoyant smoke pools that we are used to as smoke control engineers.

00:24:35.423 --> 00:24:41.422
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So are those details, or those are important things for your considerations?

00:24:42.784 --> 00:24:47.253
<v Ali Ashrafi>It's the latter the important elements or important details for the consideration.

00:24:47.253 --> 00:24:49.061
<v Ali Ashrafi>Jetting is one element.

00:24:49.061 --> 00:25:12.449
<v Ali Ashrafi>I'll just talk a little bit about this in a second, because we're looking at it from two different viewpoints, I think as far as jetting, but also, you know, the peak release rate tends to be higher and it can cause very local, very intense for more short-lived but very intense impingement on structural elements and that can cause, in some cases, concrete spalling, for example, exposing but very local right.

00:25:12.509 --> 00:25:14.133
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>It's like almost a point exposure.

00:25:14.641 --> 00:25:18.191
<v Ali Ashrafi>Right, I mean in the world of fire, whatever point means in the world of fire.

00:25:19.580 --> 00:25:41.556
<v Ali Ashrafi>It's not a point point, but yes, it's local, but that can propagate because there's several different things that can happen inside a concrete mix, both from the point of view of the vapor pressure that goes inside, but also thermal expansion and the shear stresses it can cause at the layer that is basically that has a high gradient, thermal gradient inside of it and where the cage sits, reinforcing cage.

00:25:41.556 --> 00:25:56.570
<v Ali Ashrafi>So there's a lot of different details and if you neglect them completely you might basically miss the picture, because if they fall, even what we could consider again, quote unquote point can propagate across the large surface area of a slab and that can cause a significant damage structural.

00:25:56.570 --> 00:25:57.701
<v Ali Ashrafi>So that's one aspect.

00:25:57.701 --> 00:25:59.003
<v Ali Ashrafi>So that is an important detail.

00:25:59.003 --> 00:26:07.561
<v Ali Ashrafi>Jetting, obviously, is very important as well, because if it is somewhat high pressure, I'm not going to call it high, high pressure because it tends not to be excessive.

00:26:07.561 --> 00:26:13.865
<v Ali Ashrafi>We're not talking about supersonic pipe flow, you know, like we know in the natural gas world, but it is high pressure.

00:26:13.865 --> 00:26:33.846
<v Ali Ashrafi>It can be high pressure jetting and it's directional and that can contribute to fire spread, fire propagation, because you don't necessarily have to propagate battery to battery, right If the battery starts the fire and then you have a directional flame that impinges on the tires of the adjacent vehicles, it will go, and it doesn't really matter that the battery of the adjacent vehicle will go.

00:26:33.907 --> 00:26:36.593
<v Ali Ashrafi>Later it will start with plastics in the car.

00:26:36.593 --> 00:26:38.222
<v Ali Ashrafi>The fire doesn't care.

00:26:38.222 --> 00:26:47.214
<v Ali Ashrafi>The nice quote-unquote, very quote-unquote, nice or the easier thing about it is when it spreads like this, you're avoiding explosion.

00:26:47.214 --> 00:26:49.180
<v Ali Ashrafi>The fuel that's released is burning.

00:26:49.180 --> 00:26:50.320
<v Ali Ashrafi>You already have a fire.

00:26:50.320 --> 00:26:51.001
<v Ali Ashrafi>It will burn.

00:26:51.001 --> 00:26:54.423
<v Ali Ashrafi>It's unlikely that it will accumulate before ignition.

00:26:54.423 --> 00:26:59.307
<v Ali Ashrafi>That of course assumes that you've got a certain layout or an open layout of the parking garage.

00:26:59.307 --> 00:27:11.256
<v Ali Ashrafi>If you've created pockets, individual pockets, so to speak, that can allow gas accumulation, even though in the adjacent pocket, so to speak, or the area you could burn, then you may have both, or the area you could burn, then you may have both.

00:27:11.256 --> 00:27:13.218
<v Ali Ashrafi>So a lot of it depends on the details.

00:27:13.218 --> 00:27:24.369
<v Ali Ashrafi>But under the assumption that you have an open space and several vehicles parked next to each other, the fire spread basically fuels the fire, but the explosion issue is somewhat secondary at that point.

00:27:24.980 --> 00:27:29.769
<v Pawel Woelke>And Roy says we're going to go back to that, I'm sure that fire versus the explosion side, absolutely.

00:27:29.769 --> 00:27:35.009
<v Pawel Woelke>But one more thing to add and you deal with car parks all the time, right?

00:27:35.009 --> 00:27:39.728
<v Pawel Woelke>So I've heard this from you multiple times and it's true they're just a challenging place to design.

00:27:39.728 --> 00:27:47.799
<v Pawel Woelke>Once you get past a small fire, right, if you have a fire that engage multiple cars at some point, it becomes a very hard thing to deal with, right?

00:27:47.799 --> 00:27:52.381
<v Pawel Woelke>So really a lot of the question is making sure that if you have a hazard thing to deal with, right.

00:27:52.381 --> 00:28:07.288
<v Pawel Woelke>So really a lot of the question is making sure that if you have a hazard, it's a hazard that doesn't spread fast and large enough to a point where you can't control it but going back to my reality and this kind of hysteria that happened in the media is also not that a battery will immediately trigger another battery and another and another.

00:28:07.690 --> 00:28:18.811
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>There, like, there were two videos, that uh viral videos, one showing a I think it was a in china, where that actually happened like boss to boss to us, and so I was crazy.

00:28:18.811 --> 00:28:26.799
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>But there was also a fire of seven, eight electric vehicles I believe that was australia where they propagated.

00:28:26.799 --> 00:28:31.326
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>They've burned, but there was no thermal runaway in any of the secondary vehicles.

00:28:31.326 --> 00:28:37.415
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>They went through a significant fire yet there was no thermal runaway of the battery.

00:28:37.415 --> 00:28:44.794
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So it's not that you subject battery to a jet flame and then immediately you'll have another jet flame from another.

00:28:44.794 --> 00:28:46.962
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>It's not that dramatic.

00:28:46.962 --> 00:29:00.222
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>The cascade Also, you know, whenever I talk with fire scientists and at this point we also have experience of our own actually setting those batteries on fire just with an external heat source is not that easy.

00:29:00.222 --> 00:29:01.606
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>It's a very interesting point.

00:29:01.646 --> 00:29:12.549
<v Ali Ashrafi>It goes back to the point you made earlier as far as testing and what people focus on, and that also goes back to the difficulty of the problem and the novelty of the problem and constantly changing chemistry.

00:29:13.080 --> 00:29:23.195
<v Ali Ashrafi>If you take a module not even a pack, but a module, multiple cells and you test it under nominally the same condition in the lab environment multiple times, you're not going to get the same result.

00:29:23.195 --> 00:29:31.152
<v Ali Ashrafi>Sometimes some batteries will be easier to trigger than others and sometimes the same battery will be relatively easily triggered in one test.

00:29:31.152 --> 00:29:37.650
<v Ali Ashrafi>The same battery will be relatively easily triggered in one test and then you basically try to replicate that test, but with nominally the same battery or the same type of battery.

00:29:37.650 --> 00:29:43.990
<v Ali Ashrafi>Obviously you're not going to use the same one, but basically nominally the same battery in the same environment and you will trigger it.

00:29:43.990 --> 00:29:46.409
<v Ali Ashrafi>So there's significant uncertainty related to this.

00:29:46.409 --> 00:30:06.962
<v Ali Ashrafi>We just don't understand enough about the mechanism of initiation of thermal runaway within the individual cell, sweeping conclusions and and that's a pretty important piece from the point of view of fundamental research as far as the understanding well, I think we we have a perfect grasp of what happens when you nail them, you know.

00:30:07.042 --> 00:30:19.951
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>But let's say, the natural causes of thermal runaway and the initiating chain of events that initiates a natural fire like one that you could expect in your car park while charging or whatever.

00:30:19.951 --> 00:30:24.290
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>This is still something we need more to research.

00:30:24.290 --> 00:30:41.263
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And also, you know, going back to these artifacts of testing, it's very difficult to distinguish the natural growth and development of these events versus the trigger, because if I have two megawatts of heptane and I accelerate this, I don't even know how much I've accelerated, you know.

00:30:41.263 --> 00:30:47.931
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And then, taking the number from this experiment to my design, am I conservative or am I just wrong?

00:30:47.931 --> 00:30:49.286
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I don't know that right.

00:30:49.900 --> 00:30:57.036
<v Ali Ashrafi>Yeah, and I think that's one of the key issues right, and that goes back to that uncertainty of nominally the same event and you can have multiple different consequences.

00:30:57.036 --> 00:31:01.548
<v Ali Ashrafi>It's really difficult to say, and I think again the evolving nature of the technology itself.

00:31:01.548 --> 00:31:06.636
<v Ali Ashrafi>Separators change what happens at the interface between the electrode and the electrolyte.

00:31:06.636 --> 00:31:24.790
<v Ali Ashrafi>That changes because the chemistry changes, the amount of oxygen you have, the phosphates you've got, a different amount of oxygen than in other chemistry Solid states, how they evolve, use of supercapacitors in addition to the solid state battery there's a constant evolution of these things and they cause changes in the way those batteries react.

00:31:24.790 --> 00:31:27.669
<v Ali Ashrafi>But I mean, at the end of the day it's an electrochemical cell.

00:31:27.669 --> 00:31:31.611
<v Ali Ashrafi>We're dealing with an unstable or conditionally stable system.

00:31:31.611 --> 00:31:38.787
<v Ali Ashrafi>The energy does not want to sit there, so it will get out under the right conditions.

00:31:38.807 --> 00:31:40.210
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>What those conditions are is at this point not very well understood.

00:31:40.210 --> 00:31:44.105
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>We're trying to pack as much of that energy to as little space as we can.

00:31:44.105 --> 00:31:45.809
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>You know that's the optimization front.

00:31:46.751 --> 00:31:48.042
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>What about the tools of engineering?

00:31:48.042 --> 00:31:55.647
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>We now talked about the evolution of the systems, and everyone can see that evolution is so fast-paced.

00:31:55.647 --> 00:31:56.847
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>It's ridiculous, right?

00:31:56.847 --> 00:32:01.164
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>We don't even know what's happening in the R&D labs of those big manufacturers.

00:32:01.164 --> 00:32:02.008
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>We have no clue.

00:32:02.008 --> 00:32:05.263
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>What are the next generation separators, electrolyzers?

00:32:05.263 --> 00:32:05.924
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>We'll not know.

00:32:05.924 --> 00:32:10.852
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>It's very difficult to obtain that knowledge, but yet I need to design my car park today.

00:32:10.852 --> 00:32:13.663
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>You know that's going to stand there for 50 years.

00:32:13.663 --> 00:32:16.569
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>What do I do in the in this uncertain reality?

00:32:16.951 --> 00:32:21.087
<v Ali Ashrafi>we operate in the risk world right, and risk assessment has two elements to it.

00:32:21.087 --> 00:32:24.403
<v Ali Ashrafi>There's the likelihood or probability of occurrence and then there's its consequence.

00:32:24.403 --> 00:32:36.000
<v Ali Ashrafi>Once the event does happen and you know, usually in the perfect world you've got visibility into both elements and you can have also actions that affect both elements.

00:32:36.000 --> 00:32:48.330
<v Ali Ashrafi>So in the first instance, if you're affecting likelihood or probability of occurrence of an event in this case let's just say thermal runaway then you would basically take certain actions that would reduce the probability of occurrence.

00:32:48.330 --> 00:32:51.108
<v Ali Ashrafi>We do not have that ability at present.

00:32:51.339 --> 00:32:55.146
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Does the car park manufacturers or sorry, car manufacturers battery manufacturers?

00:32:55.167 --> 00:32:55.809
<v Ali Ashrafi>They do absolutely.

00:32:55.809 --> 00:33:19.299
<v Ali Ashrafi>But you know, specifically to your question and that's the world we operate in you come at a problem from the viewpoint of a car park manufacturer or an owner and if you own a car park or are building a car park, you don't get to necessarily choose which vehicle you're allowing to park and you're not going to make a call to a car manufacturer and ask about the details of their battery and the safety system or their battery management system, for example.

00:33:19.299 --> 00:33:22.189
<v Ali Ashrafi>And if you were to do this, you're not going to get any answers right.

00:33:22.189 --> 00:33:36.411
<v Ali Ashrafi>So you operate in a bit of a dark space as far as the probability of occurrence and you also have even less influence on limiting that or reducing the probability by certain active measures, as in, you know, basically prevention.

00:33:36.759 --> 00:33:43.990
<v Ali Ashrafi>So in what we do, for the most part and there are some exceptions to it and I can't really get into the details, but some of it is government-sponsored research.

00:33:43.990 --> 00:33:54.768
<v Ali Ashrafi>So, with the exception of those, if you're talking about a commercial world, we are assuming that the event will happen in a vehicle and you focus on the other side of the risk, which is consequence.

00:33:54.768 --> 00:33:56.352
<v Ali Ashrafi>We know the consequence is high.

00:33:56.352 --> 00:33:57.643
<v Ali Ashrafi>So how high is it?

00:33:57.643 --> 00:34:00.451
<v Ali Ashrafi>What does it really mean and how do you mitigate the consequence?

00:34:00.451 --> 00:34:11.661
<v Ali Ashrafi>So you basically are saying we understand that as an owner of a facility like this, you've got limited at best, at worst zero influence on the probability of occurrence, and reducing that.

00:34:11.661 --> 00:34:19.449
<v Ali Ashrafi>All of your influence sits in understanding and managing the consequences of the event, and that's where we, a majority of our focus, really is.

00:34:20.101 --> 00:34:22.849
<v Pawel Woelke>And that's not uncommon in the engineering world.

00:34:22.849 --> 00:34:32.791
<v Pawel Woelke>So we have different levels of uncertainty on the input side, but we always work in the context of what we know is limited and what we know will change.

00:34:32.791 --> 00:34:36.880
<v Pawel Woelke>Like you design a building and that building is going to be there for the next 50 years, right?

00:34:36.880 --> 00:34:39.690
<v Pawel Woelke>So there's also things that you haven't considered.

00:34:39.690 --> 00:34:52.389
<v Pawel Woelke>As Pavel said, we can look at it and take a range for that uncertainty but say what are the things we could do on the consequence side to make the design better compared to baseline, where we were not going to do those things right.

00:34:52.389 --> 00:35:01.135
<v Pawel Woelke>And so you can certainly show that you're making an improvement, understanding that none of what we do is targeting zero risk.

00:35:01.135 --> 00:35:01.938
<v Pawel Woelke>That doesn't exist.

00:35:01.938 --> 00:35:02.179
<v Pawel Woelke>Right.

00:35:02.179 --> 00:35:16.588
<v Pawel Woelke>For everything else that we do for designing buildings for earthquakes and wind and flooding and all that it comes with a specific chance that things could happen that are more than that, and the same is true for any fire-related scenario.

00:35:16.940 --> 00:35:28.248
<v Ali Ashrafi>But I think there's an interesting point here that's worth highlighting, I think, because I think we're getting pretty good in general not us necessarily, but a community, if you will, research community and engineering community.

00:35:28.248 --> 00:35:35.293
<v Ali Ashrafi>We're getting better at quantifying and understanding the consequences and developing solutions, and that knowledge will accelerate.

00:35:35.293 --> 00:35:38.585
<v Ali Ashrafi>Dissemination of that knowledge will accelerate over the next three to five years, I think.

00:35:38.585 --> 00:35:49.670
<v Ali Ashrafi>So that creates a bit of an opportunity because as practical solutions are being implemented, that knowledge again dissemination will accelerate further because people will basically use it as a precedent.

00:35:49.670 --> 00:35:50.902
<v Ali Ashrafi>So that's one aspect.

00:35:50.902 --> 00:35:53.067
<v Ali Ashrafi>And then there's a question of cost right.

00:35:53.067 --> 00:35:56.103
<v Ali Ashrafi>Those solutions will remain costly as they disseminate.

00:35:56.103 --> 00:36:02.369
<v Ali Ashrafi>They will remain costly, which will force the issue of more and more fundamental understanding on the probability of occurrence.

00:36:02.369 --> 00:36:07.326
<v Ali Ashrafi>Would it be cheaper to prevent it from happening in the first place than mitigating the consequence?

00:36:07.326 --> 00:36:11.581
<v Ali Ashrafi>And I think that will over the next again, three to five years, maybe a little bit longer.

00:36:11.581 --> 00:36:16.545
<v Ali Ashrafi>We will see that change a little bit and the shiftID onset and whatever happens later.

00:36:16.545 --> 00:36:16.764
<v Ali Ashrafi>I'm done.

00:36:34.161 --> 00:36:40.688
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Access to firefighters in X time which we believe is sufficient to deploy, like what would be your goal in design.

00:36:41.260 --> 00:36:48.762
<v Ali Ashrafi>But do you mean in the context of just looking at the consequence or trying to also think about the probability of occurrence?

00:36:48.762 --> 00:36:50.166
<v Ali Ashrafi>No, just consequence.

00:36:50.527 --> 00:36:51.210
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Just consequence.

00:36:51.489 --> 00:37:01.202
<v Ali Ashrafi>Yeah, I think you know, and Ali alluded to this earlier on right, like if you have a single vehicle catching fire, single EV catching fire and you've got, for whatever reason, I guarantee that it's not going to spread.

00:37:01.202 --> 00:37:04.257
<v Ali Ashrafi>For example, it's a single vehicle in a large space, you let it burn.

00:37:04.257 --> 00:37:10.364
<v Ali Ashrafi>It's not going to bring the building down or a car park down Highly unlikely unless something else was done Not quite right.

00:37:10.364 --> 00:37:13.945
<v Ali Ashrafi>So limiting the spread is the name of the game when it comes to fire.

00:37:13.945 --> 00:37:22.932
<v Ali Ashrafi>From that point of view, even if two vehicles were to burn, that's okay and there's no number, I guess that you could throw an absolute and say that would be okay.

00:37:22.932 --> 00:37:25.494
<v Ali Ashrafi>It all depends on the circumstances where those cars are.

00:37:25.494 --> 00:37:38.702
<v Ali Ashrafi>But you could manage individual vehicle or individual vehicles on fire, evs and obviously once the fire starts spreading, it doesn't discriminate, it doesn't care if it's internal combustion engine or ev next to it, as long as you limit the spread.

00:37:38.702 --> 00:37:41.840
<v Ali Ashrafi>That's probably the single most important thing from the point of view of fire.

00:37:41.940 --> 00:37:50.331
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I'll emphasize that um just to highlight that distinction yeah, and the tools, things that come to my mind obviously, sprinklers, that would be your game.

00:37:50.331 --> 00:37:53.922
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Uh, in here not not that popular though I think.

00:37:53.922 --> 00:38:03.588
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>The ev hazard, even though, if you may agree that it's not that much difference than combustion engine hazard, but, uh, it makes a change.

00:38:03.588 --> 00:38:12.547
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Like people would like to install them because of this new hazard, even though we may agree that from the heat release rate or total energy release, it's all.

00:38:12.547 --> 00:38:15.411
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Park similar separation distances, but that's very difficult.

00:38:15.411 --> 00:38:17.751
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>We want to pack as many as we can to car parks.

00:38:18.655 --> 00:38:23.289
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I like playing with the heights of the ceiling because I feel there's a huge value in.

00:38:23.289 --> 00:38:25.114
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Yeah, very important, very important.

00:38:25.114 --> 00:38:31.027
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And we saw that we just burned the car during the summer school and the ceiling was at three meters.

00:38:31.027 --> 00:38:35.527
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>You could see like, once the fire hit the ceiling, you could see how it went quickly.

00:38:35.527 --> 00:38:42.284
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>You know, I strongly believe it is a huge variable Walls, opening factors, whatever else comes to your mind.

00:38:42.284 --> 00:38:52.021
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>How do you realistically affect or decrease the probability that fire will spread between vehicles or and, in consequence, you're going to limit the consequences of the?

00:38:52.061 --> 00:38:52.302
<v Ali Ashrafi>fire.

00:38:52.302 --> 00:38:55.153
<v Ali Ashrafi>Well, you mentioned separation, and separation.

00:38:55.153 --> 00:39:12.655
<v Ali Ashrafi>Distance is powerful, right, but, like in absence of a distance between the vehicles, you can bring in a separation, a physical separation that's not necessarily there in place from the beginning but is retractable or dropped or put on an offending vehicle or serious vehicles and isolated.

00:39:12.655 --> 00:39:18.362
<v Ali Ashrafi>The challenge with these, especially the more permanent barriers or rigid barriers, is that you may exacerbate the issue of explosion.

00:39:18.362 --> 00:39:31.724
<v Ali Ashrafi>You may exacerbate the issue of explosion Because those elements that separate the fire, especially the rigid ones, will likely allow accumulation of the flammable gases if it is released from a battery without being ignited.

00:39:31.724 --> 00:39:35.501
<v Ali Ashrafi>So that's a very, very important consideration that's often lost in the discussion.

00:39:35.501 --> 00:39:46.643
<v Ali Ashrafi>And the other thing and that goes, I guess, around moving into the explosion aspect, once you start releasing the gases and you ignite a flammable gas cloud that is accumulated in a particular space.

00:39:47.836 --> 00:39:49.181
<v Pawel Woelke>And I'm going to add one more thing.

00:39:49.181 --> 00:39:54.181
<v Pawel Woelke>There are other aspects which are not engineering, but broader design.

00:39:54.181 --> 00:39:58.222
<v Pawel Woelke>So how are you designing your space in terms of the layout of cars?

00:39:58.222 --> 00:40:03.324
<v Pawel Woelke>How are you designing it in the sense of providing access to fire service?

00:40:03.324 --> 00:40:07.967
<v Pawel Woelke>How are you doing it with respect to how people can get out of that area safely?

00:40:07.967 --> 00:40:11.815
<v Pawel Woelke>And those things are really important too in terms of what the consequences are.

00:40:11.934 --> 00:40:29.271
<v Pawel Woelke>So if you think about these early in the design so the EVs are not an afterthought, but you know you're going to have a certain number and you can start looking at how am I laying them out and how close are they to openings and how easy is it for the fire department to come in?

00:40:29.271 --> 00:40:37.148
<v Pawel Woelke>And can I protect people to be able to evacuate if needed in a way that gives them time and they're exposed to less risk?

00:40:37.148 --> 00:40:40.364
<v Pawel Woelke>And all those things really do drive the consequences.

00:40:40.364 --> 00:40:47.460
<v Pawel Woelke>They drive the strategies on how to fight the event, both the explosion and the fire side of it.

00:40:47.460 --> 00:41:12.525
<v Pawel Woelke>So when you're looking at eViz, it's best to look at it as something that can inform all of the design and have that conversation early on and have that holistic design, and then you can converge to a solution, that's a much better solution and it's a much cheaper solution as opposed to coming to it at the end and most of your design is set and now your options are much more limited.

00:41:12.875 --> 00:41:13.960
<v Ali Ashrafi>And what about the explosion hazard?

00:41:13.960 --> 00:41:20.382
<v Ali Ashrafi>There's a lot of details that don't really matter all that much from the fire point of view, but they do matter from the point of view of explosion.

00:41:20.382 --> 00:41:23.969
<v Ali Ashrafi>So confinement and congestion are two key elements, right?

00:41:23.969 --> 00:41:35.181
<v Ali Ashrafi>So confinement speaks to inability of burning gases or hot gases to expand, and when you prevent that expansion from happening, you've got pressure rise basically.

00:41:35.181 --> 00:41:35.983
<v Ali Ashrafi>So that's one element.

00:41:35.983 --> 00:41:38.402
<v Ali Ashrafi>And then anything that changes the flame speed.

00:41:38.755 --> 00:41:45.443
<v Ali Ashrafi>If you throw a lot of congestion into it, the flame speed, hence the flame itself, the flame front tends to change its shape.

00:41:45.443 --> 00:41:49.706
<v Ali Ashrafi>You've got a bigger surface of heat transfer and you start accelerating the flame front.

00:41:49.706 --> 00:41:56.469
<v Ali Ashrafi>And you can in the case of hydrogen, that's a known fact you can basically turn deflagration into detonation.

00:41:56.469 --> 00:41:59.364
<v Ali Ashrafi>Ev of gas is 35%, roughly hydrogen.

00:41:59.364 --> 00:42:00.777
<v Ali Ashrafi>It's a mix, obviously.

00:42:00.777 --> 00:42:05.023
<v Ali Ashrafi>So you're dealing with a much more complicated gas mix from the combustion chemistry point of view.

00:42:05.023 --> 00:42:10.559
<v Ali Ashrafi>But you know there's no research right now that says you will not change that.

00:42:10.559 --> 00:42:17.623
<v Ali Ashrafi>You will not transition from deflagration into detonation and, given the high hydrogen content and its characteristic, that's something to look at.

00:42:17.623 --> 00:42:29.429
<v Ali Ashrafi>And even if you don't change, if you don't basically end up with a detonation, congestion or any element that will accelerate the flame front will lead to significant increase of overpressure.

00:42:29.958 --> 00:42:30.911
<v Pawel Woelke>It's just that trade-off.

00:42:30.911 --> 00:42:33.822
<v Pawel Woelke>Right, sometimes all your objectives are in line.

00:42:33.822 --> 00:42:38.123
<v Pawel Woelke>You can mitigate everything with the same tools.

00:42:38.123 --> 00:42:52.608
<v Pawel Woelke>Between fire and explosion there's that trade-off where sometimes you do something that makes fire better and explosion worse, or vice versa, which means when you're trying to come up with the right solution, it's the right solution in the context of a specific building.

00:42:52.608 --> 00:42:54.862
<v Pawel Woelke>It's not the right solution everywhere.

00:42:54.862 --> 00:43:00.208
<v Pawel Woelke>It's the right solution for that building in that particular condition, with those sets of TVs in those places.

00:43:01.177 --> 00:43:06.199
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Do you have any experiences with using ventilation or smoke control for mitigating the explosion hazard?

00:43:06.199 --> 00:43:07.141
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Absolutely.

00:43:07.744 --> 00:43:15.036
<v Ali Ashrafi>That's one of the best ways in the sort of department of once the thermal runway happens, can you prevent the explosion from occurring?

00:43:15.036 --> 00:43:16.300
<v Ali Ashrafi>The answer is yes.

00:43:16.300 --> 00:43:21.559
<v Ali Ashrafi>If you ventilate the hell out of the place, then you will basically prevent gas accumulation.

00:43:21.798 --> 00:43:22.521
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>How do you detect?

00:43:22.521 --> 00:43:25.628
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Because you assume you would like to have it automated, right?

00:43:27.059 --> 00:43:32.226
<v Ali Ashrafi>Yeah, so there's a number of different and it's obviously a nascent technology in a nascent area and it's evolving.

00:43:32.226 --> 00:43:39.313
<v Ali Ashrafi>But there's a number of different sensors that allow you to get somewhat of an advanced notice of a gas detection.

00:43:39.313 --> 00:43:43.043
<v Ali Ashrafi>Some are focused on hydrogen, specifically hydrogen gas detectors.

00:43:43.043 --> 00:43:49.090
<v Ali Ashrafi>Some are focused on the actual lithium-ion gas mixture release.

00:43:49.090 --> 00:43:53.282
<v Ali Ashrafi>A lot of them are based on particle permillion, basically the gas particles that are in the air.

00:43:53.282 --> 00:43:57.699
<v Ali Ashrafi>Some of them are focused on temperature, some of them are focused on pressure.

00:43:57.699 --> 00:44:07.806
<v Ali Ashrafi>There's a whole suite of different sensors that allow you to do this and I'm going to say allow with again another one of those quotation air quotes, so to speak.

00:44:07.847 --> 00:44:25.219
<v Ali Ashrafi>We're not aware of a single silver bullet over here, but it is a critical element, as you've pointed to, wojtek, in terms of you know, when you kind of trigger, obviously one answer would be to say, okay, in a highly critical space you might just run your active ventilation system all the time, but then it becomes incredibly costly.

00:44:25.559 --> 00:44:43.643
<v Ali Ashrafi>But you know, I only mentioned that to highlight that active ventilation system and we're not talking about insignificant rate of error changes, right, it's a significant amount depending on the details that you would have to exchange per hour to make a problem go away, but it is doable, it is possible to basically make the problem go away.

00:44:43.643 --> 00:44:49.681
<v Ali Ashrafi>So and I specifically mentioned that in the context of, let's just say, you have a relatively small room within the building.

00:44:49.681 --> 00:44:58.137
<v Ali Ashrafi>You're not talking about any e-parking, but you're talking about scooters and bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters in a relatively, again, small room that is fully enclosed.

00:44:58.137 --> 00:45:00.440
<v Ali Ashrafi>So a potentially bad scenario.

00:45:00.440 --> 00:45:20.411
<v Ali Ashrafi>You can design a ventilation system that will exhaust all of the gases from this thing before any explosions can occur, and this is not, again, an expensive solution, but not a practical solution in terms of even running that system all the time, so that you don't basically get any gas, flammable gas, accumulation in there.

00:45:20.896 --> 00:45:25.144
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I'm going to ask you a horribly difficult question, but if you would have an answer, that would be amazing.

00:45:25.144 --> 00:45:28.802
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Any idea what would be the flammability range for those mixtures?

00:45:28.802 --> 00:45:29.925
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>A ballpark assumption?

00:45:31.596 --> 00:45:33.222
<v Ali Ashrafi>That's a difficult question, I know.

00:45:33.222 --> 00:45:40.961
<v Ali Ashrafi>Yeah, I think that we're operating under the flammability range that is not dissimilar from hydrogen.

00:45:40.961 --> 00:45:41.724
<v Ali Ashrafi>Okay, that's massive.

00:45:42.755 --> 00:45:43.277
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>That's massive.

00:45:43.277 --> 00:45:47.740
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Obviously I like this discussion because we're Polish, so you can resonate with that.

00:45:47.740 --> 00:45:53.992
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>In Poland we had these propane-fueled tanks and we tried to kick them out of car parks.

00:45:53.992 --> 00:45:54.677
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>It didn't happen.

00:45:54.677 --> 00:45:57.485
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So we had to figure out how to allow them safely in car parks.

00:45:57.485 --> 00:46:03.059
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So we've developed systems to detect propane gas to activate ventilation in those spaces.

00:46:03.059 --> 00:46:08.750
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Propane is also heavier than air, so it spreads on the floor, not underneath the ceiling.

00:46:08.750 --> 00:46:24.708
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So I kind of find a lot of similarity between those hazards that we've already learned to deal with, at least in Poland, in terms of LPG-fueled cars, and potential explosion challenges brought by the world of electric vehicles.

00:46:24.708 --> 00:46:33.309
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Do you know how common it is that the thermal runaway gases do not ignite and form this hazardous cloud?

00:46:33.309 --> 00:46:34.601
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Do we have a ballpark number?

00:46:35.215 --> 00:46:38.244
<v Ali Ashrafi>So, just before I get into this, the answer is probably no.

00:46:38.244 --> 00:46:42.804
<v Ali Ashrafi>But before I get into this, just to follow up on the previous point you made.

00:46:42.804 --> 00:46:46.461
<v Ali Ashrafi>So that's why I kind of had you a little bit from the point of view of flammability range, right?

00:46:46.461 --> 00:46:55.356
<v Ali Ashrafi>Because if you take hydrogen flammability range, then okay, it's just not only super wide, but also you have very low ignition energy, right?

00:46:55.356 --> 00:47:04.474
<v Ali Ashrafi>So, like the worst of the worst, and if, in the same time, you assume that all of it goes up, as it would with hydrogen, then that may be an unconservative assumption, right?

00:47:04.474 --> 00:47:11.400
<v Ali Ashrafi>Because, like you said, some of the gases will actually sit there a little bit lower, some of them will actually spread around floor area.

00:47:11.400 --> 00:47:24.163
<v Ali Ashrafi>So you have to figure out a best way and run basically a bit of a parametric study to figure out what your design parameters really are, because you don't want to compound conservatisms and you also don't want to be unconservative.

00:47:24.163 --> 00:47:29.798
<v Ali Ashrafi>So that's part of the reason why we exist in the risk world when it comes to those considerations.

00:47:29.838 --> 00:47:31.563
<v Ali Ashrafi>Right, it's very risk-driven design.

00:47:31.563 --> 00:47:33.516
<v Ali Ashrafi>You have to consider the scenarios that you have.

00:47:33.516 --> 00:47:37.853
<v Ali Ashrafi>Do first, pass at the risk scoring, quantitative risk scoring, you know.

00:47:37.853 --> 00:47:39.456
<v Ali Ashrafi>Sharpen the pencil on the highest one.

00:47:39.456 --> 00:47:46.130
<v Ali Ashrafi>Sharpen the pencil once again and iterate on those things before you actually say, okay, this is my environment that I'm dealing with and start designing.

00:47:46.130 --> 00:47:52.539
<v Ali Ashrafi>So these things are important and I didn't expect us necessarily to get into the weeds of that, but we are Super interesting.

00:47:52.539 --> 00:48:09.521
<v Ali Ashrafi>But it also highlights why it's a difficult problem and also why authorities having jurisdiction having a tough time regulating this thing, especially in the space where people kind of expect a bit of a standardized approach where you do one, two and three and case is closed.

00:48:09.521 --> 00:48:12.344
<v Ali Ashrafi>It won't be that for a long, long time.

00:48:12.655 --> 00:48:14.222
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Yeah, we don't have standardized solutions.

00:48:14.222 --> 00:48:23.043
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>As Ali mentioned, holistic approach is necessary and there's customized solutions for particular car parks.

00:48:23.043 --> 00:48:28.101
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Ali, in the previous discussions you've also mentioned that it needs to be considered from the beginning of the design.

00:48:28.101 --> 00:48:36.344
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Do you have any examples of how thinking about it too late was problematic from the design point of view?

00:48:37.458 --> 00:48:41.362
<v Pawel Woelke>So let me speak in theoretical as opposed to specific projects.

00:48:41.742 --> 00:48:50.344
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Yes, of course, in a hypothetical project that you would run troubles with, it would look like we don't have any problems with our products.

00:48:50.344 --> 00:48:51.085
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Of course, of course.

00:48:51.085 --> 00:48:54.302
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>But if a hypothetical company would have a hypothetical problem?

00:48:54.655 --> 00:49:00.034
<v Pawel Woelke>But let's say you come in at the end and the design is set, going back to the parameters that you mentioned.

00:49:00.034 --> 00:49:02.324
<v Pawel Woelke>Your ceiling height is set, which you know.

00:49:02.324 --> 00:49:10.268
<v Pawel Woelke>Where you have your EVs is set in the building relative to the perimeter of the building, whether they're spread or in one area.

00:49:10.268 --> 00:49:19.121
<v Pawel Woelke>You've designed your infrastructure, you've designed your chargers and now you come in and you want to quantify that because you thought it's not going to have an impact.

00:49:19.161 --> 00:49:35.282
<v Pawel Woelke>And then we run our analysis and it's a detailed analysis and we want to move some up, for the cars are to be able to come up with a reasonable cost solution, right, where you can balance the explosion and the fire risk at the same time, right.

00:49:35.282 --> 00:49:44.844
<v Pawel Woelke>And that ends up needing you to change the number of EVs that you have and change your location and change your design of your charging system.

00:49:44.844 --> 00:49:54.626
<v Pawel Woelke>And if you're really being looking at all of it, it might really affect where you have people coming in and out of that space, and those are very hard to like.

00:49:54.626 --> 00:49:57.523
<v Pawel Woelke>If that comes towards the end of the design process.

00:49:57.523 --> 00:50:08.266
<v Pawel Woelke>You either do all those things, and it ends up being very expensive, or you're not doing them, and so now you either have like a more expensive solution or you're living with what you have Right.

00:50:08.266 --> 00:50:17.960
<v Pawel Woelke>So that's what I'm talking about Like the later you come in, the less things you can play with to come up with a good solution, with an optimal solution.

00:50:18.181 --> 00:50:35.172
<v Ali Ashrafi>I would add that you know, maybe the worst examples I can think of not specific, but the ones that would be hardest to resolve would be the ones where you're talking about potentially industrial facility or facility where the process flow governs just about everything else.

00:50:35.172 --> 00:50:48.157
<v Ali Ashrafi>Okay, and the process is such that you require placement of certain critical elements, including potentially vehicles or stationary energy storage systems, in a certain location, and it may be driven by I don't know the cost of the counter wire.

00:50:48.157 --> 00:50:50.827
<v Ali Ashrafi>It may be driven by latency of the transfer.

00:50:50.827 --> 00:50:59.998
<v Ali Ashrafi>It may be driven by the reliability requirements there could be a lot of stuff that kind of or just transport requirements if it's vehicles, right, If it's anything that sort of.

00:51:00.018 --> 00:51:12.135
<v Ali Ashrafi>There's an overarching objective of a specific facility that requires that you place energy storage systems within vehicles or not, stationary, within specific location.

00:51:12.135 --> 00:51:17.588
<v Ali Ashrafi>That becomes difficult, especially if that process was already designed and you come in to sort of mitigate the risk.

00:51:17.588 --> 00:51:23.478
<v Ali Ashrafi>That becomes very difficult and very costly, becomes very difficult and very costly.

00:51:23.478 --> 00:51:31.264
<v Ali Ashrafi>The flip side of it is that if that process is important enough, it requires that sort of solution, then the cost is easier to absorb within those types of projects than commercial facilities that simply rely on parking.

00:51:31.364 --> 00:51:32.536
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>EVs For the end.

00:51:32.536 --> 00:51:43.237
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Perhaps a difficult question, but do you think we are going to have standardized solutions or the environment is changing so quickly that standardization will never catch up?

00:51:43.677 --> 00:51:50.581
<v Ali Ashrafi>Because I'm kind of afraid that that's the case and the environment is changing so quickly that standardization will never catch up, Because I'm kind of afraid that that's the case.

00:51:50.581 --> 00:51:51.081
<v Ali Ashrafi>I think it will.

00:51:51.081 --> 00:51:51.922
<v Ali Ashrafi>To be honest with you.

00:51:51.922 --> 00:51:53.182
<v Ali Ashrafi>We've seen multiple examples of that.

00:51:53.182 --> 00:51:57.043
<v Ali Ashrafi>When there is a burning need pun intended, really a burning need for solutions, then solutions do evolve.

00:51:57.405 --> 00:52:18.476
<v Ali Ashrafi>And I think that there is a tendency for big institutions I'm not going to say big institutional clients, institutions who have a stake in what they're doing, not just from the point of view of protecting their assets, but also from the point of view of their reputation that they put on the line to implement solutions that are forward thinking, visionary, and they do that.

00:52:18.476 --> 00:52:22.586
<v Ali Ashrafi>And we see an increased tendency to do this, to do the responsible thing.

00:52:22.586 --> 00:52:25.123
<v Ali Ashrafi>Here in the US, we see it all the time.

00:52:25.123 --> 00:52:40.782
<v Ali Ashrafi>And when those solutions are implemented, a lot of people tend to copy those and it's very difficult to argue that you didn't do what you needed to do if you copied somebody else's solution who basically, you know, studied it at length, did the proper risk assessment and implemented a set of solutions.

00:52:40.782 --> 00:52:58.177
<v Ali Ashrafi>So once you have enough examples out there where you could basically travel from facility to facility and observe what was done, including the ones who may have undergone a situation in which an EV burned or there was an explosion, and how the systems handled that type of thing, which you know.

00:52:58.557 --> 00:53:01.505
<v Ali Ashrafi>It's inevitable, unfortunately, that we will see things like that.

00:53:01.505 --> 00:53:08.827
<v Ali Ashrafi>I think solutions will start propagating and I don't think that to your point, I don't think the understanding is going to be completely there.

00:53:08.827 --> 00:53:13.726
<v Ali Ashrafi>I think we'll always have, from the scientific and engineering point of view, a lot of questions on this.

00:53:13.726 --> 00:53:23.815
<v Ali Ashrafi>Maybe not always, but for foreseeable future, for the next 10 years, given the evolution of things, I think there will be a lot of unanswered questions, things.

00:53:23.815 --> 00:53:37.679
<v Ali Ashrafi>I think there will be a lot of unanswered questions, but I think that, just as it is in the real world, the engineering solutions are all about making sure that we focus on what really matters in the grand scheme of things and design such that we oftentimes avoid the hardest problems by basically eliminating them.

00:53:37.679 --> 00:53:51.443
<v Ali Ashrafi>And I think we will get to that type of stage within the next 10 years where we'll be able to basically design the problem away, so to speak, because we've seen a number of different solutions, We've seen how they work and we've seen enough studies on that.

00:53:53.099 --> 00:53:54.083
<v Pawel Woelke>I fully agree with that.

00:53:54.083 --> 00:53:58.561
<v Pawel Woelke>Never is a very long time.

00:53:58.561 --> 00:54:12.364
<v Pawel Woelke>You really will converge to a few templates for solutions where you could have, you know, certain situations where a solution one, two and three work together best, and then certain set of risks where a few other solutions work better together.

00:54:12.364 --> 00:54:19.536
<v Pawel Woelke>But once we have enough of them then it will be easier to say this is when you use template one and this is when you use template two.

00:54:19.615 --> 00:54:29.123
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>But we have some years to get there when, I think, the first time I've really realized that these are different animals in terms of car park, find, safety.

00:54:29.123 --> 00:54:34.820
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I think that was the YouTube video of a car going in Shanghai, the long flare.

00:54:34.820 --> 00:54:39.860
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I remember, you know, that time I was doing a CFD for a car park.

00:54:39.860 --> 00:54:43.077
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I just stopped it and I just, oh my God, this looks like a megawatt.

00:54:43.077 --> 00:54:52.909
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>So what if I started my simulation immediately with a megawatt, like what it would look like, and I wake up in the morning to see the results and I'm, oh my God, we're not ready for that?

00:54:52.909 --> 00:54:59.780
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>That was an immediate like a feeling of overwhelm when I saw this scenario six or seven years ago.

00:54:59.820 --> 00:55:01.483
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>But fast forward seven years.

00:55:01.483 --> 00:55:10.684
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I believe we're at the point where we can calmly approach it, distill the differences, identify the sets of challenges, propose solutions.

00:55:10.684 --> 00:55:19.983
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Perhaps, pavel, what you say, seven, 10 years, maybe it will be just, you know, run of the mill, typical building A, apply these rules and they just work.

00:55:19.983 --> 00:55:27.641
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And perhaps we'll, most likely we'll have to deal with specific challenges brought by new vehicles of the time.

00:55:27.641 --> 00:55:35.065
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I'm pretty sure that the industry will provide us with new, uh fun challenges to solve, but uh yeah, yeah, just I'll be.

00:55:35.106 --> 00:55:37.297
<v Ali Ashrafi>I'm playing with words, it's a bit of a semantics right now.

00:55:37.297 --> 00:55:43.708
<v Ali Ashrafi>I don't know that it's going to be a run-of-the-mill thing, but I think we'll just sit there and we'll be, just you know, kind kind of like what we talked about at the beginning.

00:55:43.708 --> 00:55:44.911
<v Ali Ashrafi>We'll be educated about it.

00:55:44.911 --> 00:55:48.019
<v Ali Ashrafi>We'll sit there as a community and we'll say, okay, you got EVs parked.

00:55:48.019 --> 00:55:50.626
<v Ali Ashrafi>Okay, it's a thing we're going to address it.

00:55:50.626 --> 00:55:57.922
<v Ali Ashrafi>This is how it's going and it's not going to be a research project, and right now it isn't really a research project.

00:55:57.922 --> 00:56:00.186
<v Ali Ashrafi>It has elements of research project.

00:56:00.186 --> 00:56:06.081
<v Ali Ashrafi>It's going to be part of the design, I think, and I think we will see that within the next 7 to 10 years.

00:56:06.514 --> 00:56:10.824
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Okay, guys, thanks for coming and sharing your views and opinions.

00:56:10.824 --> 00:56:16.882
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I'm setting my alarm to like 7 years and we're going to figure out what has changed now.

00:56:16.882 --> 00:56:21.137
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Yeah, just on a serious note, thank you so much for coming and sharing your opinions.

00:56:21.137 --> 00:56:26.766
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>It's always nice to learn from practitioners and see what others around are doing, so thanks for that.

00:56:26.875 --> 00:56:27.317
<v Pawel Woelke>Absolutely.

00:56:27.317 --> 00:56:28.081
<v Pawel Woelke>Thanks for having us.

00:56:28.554 --> 00:56:30.976
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Thank you, thanks for having me, and that's it.

00:56:30.976 --> 00:56:31.619
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Thank you for listening.

00:56:31.619 --> 00:56:48.181
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Let's hope that in seven to 10 years we really will have standardized solutions, solutions that worked somewhere, that we know, that are safe to apply, that we know that help us tackle the consequence part of the dilemma, perhaps even maybe the probability part of the risk equation.

00:56:48.181 --> 00:56:56.240
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>But well, if we only can deal with consequences right now, let's hope we will have some really, really decent tools to deal with those consequences in seven to 10 years.

00:56:56.240 --> 00:56:58.262
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>I believe we do have those tools today.

00:56:58.262 --> 00:57:02.621
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>It's just about the trust and about how easy they are to apply.

00:57:02.621 --> 00:57:12.927
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>A lot of ideas were given in the podcast episode, so I hope that was a good foot for thought for you to create your own solutions for your electric vehicle car parks.

00:57:13.514 --> 00:57:16.815
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>A lot of new things were brought up, especially the risk of explosion.

00:57:16.815 --> 00:57:26.561
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>We actually had an explosion, most likely related to lithium-ion batteries, in Poland a few weeks ago in which two firefighters have died A really tragic story.

00:57:26.561 --> 00:57:40.907
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>It was not in a car park, but in a basement level of a building, so clearly the understanding of how great the explosion hazard could be with lithium-ion batteries is growing and it's not looking pretty, so we definitely need to find solutions for that.

00:57:40.907 --> 00:57:53.487
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>One thing that, from this discussion, is a little bit scary to me is that fire is at least we know what's happening and we can deal with that, whereas when you have a vapor cloud and it explodes, it's challenging.

00:57:53.487 --> 00:57:54.820
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>You have to detect it.

00:57:54.820 --> 00:57:58.547
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>To act, you have to use some specific features like ventilation.

00:57:58.547 --> 00:58:00.135
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>To reduce the concentrations.

00:58:00.135 --> 00:58:03.246
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>There is a different set of tool and reactions.

00:58:03.246 --> 00:58:10.800
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>To reduce the concentrations, there is a different set of tool and reactions, and I believe we need to approach the fire and explosion safety together holistically, otherwise it's not going to work.

00:58:11.255 --> 00:58:23.074
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And also what Ali has said I think that resonates with me super well is that you need to think about those electric vehicles or those hazards trade when you start designing.

00:58:23.074 --> 00:58:35.815
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>If you think about them as an afterthought, that's going to be very, very bad and very challenging to actually introduce safety features into your building that will work, that will be cost effective, that will solve the problem.

00:58:35.815 --> 00:58:41.559
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>The later you start thinking about it, the harder it's going to be, and I assume the hardest will be when you're refurbishing.

00:58:41.559 --> 00:58:43.943
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>That must be very, very challenging.

00:58:43.943 --> 00:58:49.896
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>And if some of you have good ideas how to retrofit electric vehicles into existing car parks.

00:58:49.896 --> 00:58:50.719
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Let me know.

00:58:50.719 --> 00:58:55.521
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Perhaps we can talk on the podcast, because I think that would be interesting subject for the future.

00:58:55.521 --> 00:58:58.170
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>For today, that would be all.

00:58:58.170 --> 00:59:02.576
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Thank you very much for being here with me and see you here in the Fire Science Show the next Wednesday.

00:59:02.576 --> 00:59:03.456
<v Wojciech Węgrzyński>Cheers, bye, bye.