Presumably, the ionization and/or Carbon and/or Hydrophobic additives keep the Sodium from exploding, correct?
Yes, his explanation seems plausible to me. They can mitigate the growth of the risk-causing dendrites, except when they’re being charged during very cold conditions.
I ran more research with AI and learned that the statistics on dangerous incidents is as comprehensive as I expected, plus there’s a confounding delay of damage caused by charging while cold vs the possibly days-long delay of that damage causing runaway ignition of fires. And the swelling of some battery packs is apparently not an indication of the growth of danger-causing dendrites. Also, it IS recommended to put burning batteries in water. (I had been assuming, wrongly, that water would make them react more explosively.)
I’m replacing the spent lead-acid batteries in my UPS with LiFePO4 batteries, even if I buy larger ones that have to reside outside of the case. They cost more, but that’s more than made up for by their life time durability. I’ll buy another just for electronic bench projects, and add a mains power-out detector that connects it to my CPAP machine during power outages.
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