Naperville firefighters invent nozzle to battle EV fires
The electric vehicle market has grown significantly in the past 10 years, with sales of electric vehicles surpassing 10 million by 2022. But with every new technology comes new dangers. With electric cars comes the risk of electric car fires.
Naperville firefighters Danny Puknaitis and Michael Jost realized they needed tools to combat those fires.
“Electric vehicle fires that are present today, there isn’t a whole lot of information out there,” said Puknaitis. “We wanted to be prepared in case we were to show up at two in the morning, called the garage door open to a structure fire and realized, oh, this is a Tesla that’s on fire, that’s charging. And that was the origin of the structure fire. What are we doing as a first-in truck company?”
Using the Poseidon Nozzle to combat EV fires
In response, they invented a nozzle to battle EV Fires: the Poseidon Nozzle. It attaches to a fire hose and is slid under a vehicle directly into the undercarriage to combat thermal runaway.
“If you open up a Tesla battery pack, it looks like 8,000 AA cells,” explained Jost. “So once one of those batteries starts going bad, it starts heating up, and then it starts spreading to the next one and to the next one, and at that point during thermal runaway, you’ll hear some popping, you’ll hear hissing. Those are the beginning stages of it. And then some of the late stages of thermal runaway is you’ll start seeing jet flames coming off the side, nothing we’re used to in the fire service, right?”
Data on EV fires
Though the fires are dangerous, the risk of an EV fire is low compared to internal combustion vehicles and hybrid vehicles, with 25 EVs catching fire for every 100,000 sold, whereas more than 1,500 internal combustion engine vehicles catch fire for every 100,000 sold.
Puknaitis offered an example of how EV fires can complicate an already dangerous situation. “The hazards can start coming when you’re in a parking garage, you have all these other cars exposed to this one electric vehicle fire that’s on fire. Your situation now increases dramatically from a single vehicle car fire to now an electric vehicle car fire with six other cars that are now caught on fire on the third floor of a parking garage.”
How the Poseidon Nozzle was created
The creation of the Poseidon Nozzle didn’t happen overnight.
“I happened to be learning how to weld,” said Puknaitis. “And through a lot of different prototypes, and a lot of different research and design, and questions and trial and error, we ended up with this.”
Jost commented on the practicality of their first prototype. “The first iteration of it was crazy. It was probably like 100 pounds, it was just unmanageable.”
The now much-lighter nozzle currently in production is a narrow box crafted from aircraft-grade aluminum, several feet in length, and perforated for water to escape. Baffles inside the nozzle direct the water for an even flow.
The Poseidon Nozzle is currently available for fire departments all over, but Puknaitis and Jost aren’t done yet.
“It’s not just Naperville trying to figure out a solution,” said Puknaitis. “We worked with Argonne Laboratories to get more data. So our fire department worked with their fire department, and then we reached out to the University of Illinois, and they said, ‘This is something we’ve been waiting for, but we haven’t been able to figure out how to get these batteries.’ So it’s kind of been an awesome group effort to come alongside this.”
Alternate uses for the Poseidon Nozzle
“We also can use this for internal combustion cars,” said Jost. “So if there’s a fire coming from the engine but there’s still somebody trapped in it, we could still use this to put underneath the vehicle to start putting out that fire while we’re taking care of the patient.”
It can even serve as a makeshift decontamination shower in the field.
“Cancer is a big problem right now at the fire service,” explains Jost. “We’re trying to get rid of all the carcinogens and everything. So connect a hose to this, connect it to a hydrant, and get all the stuff off you. It’s a multipurpose tool.”
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