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How to properly ship batteries?
Recently one of the business that I frequently visit said they would have to cancel orders they have taken for some portable rechargers because shipping companies refused to carry batteries from Taiwan to Hong Kong; they said that initially they tried to transport it via ships but both companies they have contacted rejected their request because they have experienced battery fire on board and later when they tried to ship it via aircraft they were also turned down with 2017 January IATA rule update being cited. Each of those portable recharger have a capacity of 5000mah (25wh) and I don't know how large batch of order have they taken, but is there actually a way for the business gto ship those batteries across the sea?
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- Dreadnought
- Posts: 10201
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Re: How to properly ship batteries?
Batteries are weird, especially when you are dealing with ones more sophisticated than lead-acid batteries. Ni-Cad, Lithium and other types have been known to suddenly and without warning reverse polarity. It's rare, but it does happen, and to this day nobody really understands why - theoretically it should not happen, but it does. When that happens, especially with batteries designed to carry a lot of stored energy, you can get fires. Ask Samsung about it. There have been a number of fires in airplanes due to such occurrences as well, so I can understand airlines getting a bit paranoid about carrying batteries.
Re: How to properly ship batteries?
Dreadnought wrote:Batteries are weird, especially when you are dealing with ones more sophisticated than lead-acid batteries. Ni-Cad, Lithium and other types have been known to suddenly and without warning reverse polarity. It's rare, but it does happen, and to this day nobody really understands why - theoretically it should not happen, but it does. When that happens, especially with batteries designed to carry a lot of stored energy, you can get fires. Ask Samsung about it. There have been a number of fires in airplanes due to such occurrences as well, so I can understand airlines getting a bit paranoid about carrying batteries.
Samsung's case is manufacturing fault + Not enough safety margin built into design.
And I do understand that airlines and ocean freighter have legitimate concerns about safety of shipping batteries, but is there any special procedure that can be followed with applicable service provider helping to transport non trivial amount of batteries across oceans?
Re: How to properly ship batteries?
Google UPS 747 crash in DXB - that is why!
It is possible, but there are crazy packing & paperwork requirements and the quantity shipped at once may be restricted. They are not compatible with any other DG and if carriers are full with other more lucrative risk free cargo, they will always take that instead.
They are banned as cargo on passenger aircraft (even though every pax has at least one but hey....) but some freighter only aircraft operators will take them. UPS wont for obvious reasons, but last time I checked Fedex will.
It is possible, but there are crazy packing & paperwork requirements and the quantity shipped at once may be restricted. They are not compatible with any other DG and if carriers are full with other more lucrative risk free cargo, they will always take that instead.
They are banned as cargo on passenger aircraft (even though every pax has at least one but hey....) but some freighter only aircraft operators will take them. UPS wont for obvious reasons, but last time I checked Fedex will.
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- TheFlyingDisk
- Posts: 2959
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Re: How to properly ship batteries?
YVRLTN wrote:They are banned as cargo on passenger aircraft (even though every pax has at least one but hey....)
Pax can only take batteries as carry-on simply because it's easier to extinguish if the battery spontaneously combusts in the cabin rather than the cargo hold.
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