Lack of lithium regulations primed battery factory for fire

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Lack of lithium regulations primed battery factory for fire

Published: 26 Jun. 2024, 18:04 Updated: 26 Jun. 2024, 18:10

Internal CCTV footage from the lithium battery manufacturing plant of Aricell in Hwaseong captures the progression of the fire. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Avoidable mistakes at a lithium battery factory in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi, are coming to light in the wake of a deadly fire that claimed dozens of lives.

Safety ignorance was prevalent at the worksite as no reportage was made two days before an explosive blaze erupted due to faulty batteries. There is not a single safety management policy set by the government despite multiple fire cases concerning lithium batteries in the past.

The lack of oversight cost 23 people their lives, including 18 migrant workers.

Batteries containing lithium — known as the "white oil" — are essential in smart grids, mobile devices and electric vehicles, but industry vulnerabilities for the major battery-producing country have been exposed.

"Though South Korea is known for its cutting-edge technology and manufacturing, the country has long been plagued by man-made disasters, including fires," according to the New York Times.

The chemical accident, which resulted in the highest death toll since the enforcement of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act two and a half years ago, laid bare the blind spots of the law.

Reported ‘satisfactory’ after self-inspection

Fire authorities were not responsible for the safety inspection of the Aricell plant. Only manufacturing facilities with a floor space of more than 30,000 square meters (323,000 square feet) is subject to intensive scrutiny by the authorities, but the Aricell plant covered only 5,530 square meters.

Officials from National Police Agency, National Fire Agency, and National Forensic Service are moving to conduct a joint inspection at the site of the fire accident at the Aricell battery factory in Hwaseong. [JOONGANG ILBO]

The company instead conducted an internal inspection of its fire response systems in April and reported a satisfactory status to the authorities.

Aricell is only obliged to report on extinguishers, automated fire detection systems and evacuation guidance once a year.

The company did not report a fire that started with a lithium battery two days before the disaster.

The husband of one of the deceased shared messages from his wife revealing that the factory's alarm went off twice, causing panic among the workers. "If they had taken measures back then..." he said while grieving over his wife’s death.

While acknowledging that there was a fire two days before, Aricell’s head of operations, Park Joong-eon, said in a press conference that it did not report it at the time since the defective product was handled promptly after igniting during the process of screening defective products.

The battery maker has a history regulatory violations, with a fine in 2019 for storing lithium at 23 times the legal limit and corrective orders in 2020 for malfunctioning firefighting equipment. The building where the fire started had only two hydrants along with small and large extinguishers.

Explosive lithium regarded as general chemical substance

The government has no management manual for lithium, which has self-igniting and water-reactive properties, making it prone to explosions when exposed to high temperatures, pressure or moisture.

Despite this, lithium is considered a general chemical substance rather than a hazardous chemical substance under the Chemical Substances Control Act, according to the Ministry of Environment.

Lithium is not subject to regulation as it poses a low fire risk at room temperature unless directly heated or degraded by fire, and its toxicity has not been confirmed.

Consequently, there exists no specified safety standards, training or regular inspections for handling lithium. It is also excluded from the fire department’s chemical accident emergency response manual.

Despite the difficulty of extinguishing lithium fires with standard extinguishers, class D fires, which concern combustible metals, are not subject to the fire safety law. This means that there are no lithium battery-specialized extinguishers.

Related regulations have three different classes of fires: class A for general fires, class B for oil and class C for electrical, with extinguishing agents developed accordingly. CCTV footage from the fire showed employees attempting to extinguish the flames with regular extinguishers, but to no avail.

The storage of 35,000 batteries in boxes near the exit also worsened the situation as workers had to flee in the opposite direction. Although the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency’s guidelines recommend storing lithium in separate rooms or buildings, these guidelines are not legally binding.

"The number of workers recently doubled, as orders for lithium batteries for military use in the Middle East have increased," an Aricell employee told the JoongAng Ilbo when asked about the storage of the boxes in the same room.

The third floor, where the fire ignited, was used for inspecting and packaging lithium battery products for military usage. In the past, there have been frequent explosions of military lithium batteries.

There were 95 battery explosion incidents in the Army alone in the decade preceding 2020, according to the Korean Society of Industrial and Engineering Technology. One notable incident is the fire that broke out at the military supply warehouse in Sejong City in 2019. The 2022 SK C&C data center blaze also started from a single lithium battery.

Need for management standards and manuals

The perception of lithium batteries as a relatively safe product has resulted in lax regulations.

The neglect of safety concerning primary batteries, which caused the recent explosion and fire, is also a problem.

"Secondary batteries are commonly used in mobile phones, laptops and cars, raising public awareness of their explosive and combustible risks, but the dangers of primary batteries are often overlooked," said professor Kong Ha-sung of Woosuk University’s fire and disaster prevention department.

Experts stress the need for safety management standards for lithium batteries and fire response manuals that talk about the difficulty of extinguishing such fires with water.

"Given the difficulty of extinguishing lithium battery fires, it is best to store batteries separately and implement regular training for workers to prevent such explosions," professor In Se-jin of Woosong University’s fire and disaster prevention department noted.

BY LEE YOUNG-KEUN, CHOI HAE-JIN [choi.haejin@joongang.co.kr]