Gunter,

I believe you're completely incorrect on all of your above points, IMHO of course.

1. Since freighters obviously carry more declared lithium batteries than they do undeclared ones, and your point being (I'm assuming) that the undeclared ones are packaged in less appropriate ways, does not take into account the fact that these batteries can spontaneously combust, or explode, for almost no reason, at any time. And that they can then produce enough heat to put other lithium batteries that are in close proximity, in an excited state, which could then lead to more explosions or fires. So it would stand to reason that multiple lithium batteries are in fact more hazardous than fewer ones would be, regardless of whether they were declared or undeclared.

2. Your statement "A lithium fire in the cabin can be covered and doused with water." shows your complete lack of understanding of this critical issue.

Remember the days of High School chemistry class? Lithium is an alkali metal, and as a result it's very reactive. Once a lithium fire starts, it's incredibly hard to put out.

The WORST thing you can do is to throw water on it. Lithium will react with the water to produce hydrogen gas, which will only intensify the fire. The other problem is that most extinguishing agents don't do terribly much for a lithium fire either.

Metal fires will often burn hot enough to be able to strip the oxygen from CO2 and continue burning. They will also break down Halon and related agents into hydrogen chloride and other toxic compounds. Sodium Bicarbonate (Class BC dry chemical) and ammonium monophosphate (class ABC dry chemical) extingushers have little to no effect.

In the heat of a fire the chemicals in lithium ion batteries may also decompose to form lithium metal. This lithium metal combusts more violently than lithium compounds, and also releases dense lithum oxide smoke, which is an irritant.

3. And that of course brings us to your third statement "If you don't want to carry lithium batteries you should not be flying freight.", which I not only find to be a braggart-type statement, but one that seems to be backed up with little, if any understanding of the real issue. In fact, I'm sure if you took a poll of educated (on the subject) pilots, not a single one would opt to carry the damn things.

Other than that, I enjoyed your post and thought you brought out some good points.

JJ

As an afterthought I thought I'd share with you a link that has some real good information about these little buggers. I quoted from there, although I didn't give them credit in the original portion of this post, but wanted to pass this information along. http://laserpointerforums.com/f53/fi...ies-55214.html