Bureau Veritas joins forum to develop marine batteries

BV believes that joining the forum will allow it to collaborate on the development of a standardised safety framework for on-board batteries, which can present a risk with a few examples of them catching fire in electric vehicles, such as on board Felicity Ace in June.

It also intends to speed up the deployment of batteries, although it does admit ‘challenges remain to be addressed on the key aspects of safety, cost, installation and battery lifecycle’.

The battery technology used on board ships is nearly always lithium-ion, which have a two-fold issue.

They can actually start the fire by thermal propagation, getting hot and exploding, or they can exacerbate fire if they catch alight from another source.

They are incredibly tricky to put out because they produce toxic and potentially explosive gases and therefore can re-ignite several times, which means it is important to use proper fire extinguishing agents to stop thermal runaway in battery modules.

Whether their batteries caused the fire on the Felicity Ace, linked above. is not certain; however the fire took days to put out and in fact was still smoking when the ship finally sank.

There are also major issues surrounding how ‘green’ lithium-ion batteries are, given that the mining of lithium on a large scale is detrimental to the environment in which it is mined, and the cobalt required in each lithium battery mostly comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where children are sent underground to dig it up. 

“Batteries,” says Paul Delouche, director of Strategy & Advanced Services at Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore, ”present unique opportunities for shipping, as the industry explores a variety of options to support its decarbonisation ambitions and ensure compliance with new emissions reduction regulations. This fast-evolving market can give ship owners a competitive advantage, enable shipyards to gain expertise, and open new markets for equipment manufacturers.”

Bureau Veritas has created ‘rules for battery-powered ships’, which it says are updated every six months ’to reflect the latest technical and safety developments’. It has three notations – battery system (safe installation and use); electric hybrid (vessels with a combination of diesel and battery); and electric hybrid prepared (for ships designed to have batteries installed in the future).