Environment & Energy

Last edited Thu Feb 6, 2025, 06:42 AM - Edit history (1)

When a Tesla burns or a Powerwall burns what are the combustion products in the presence of water of the lithium phosphorous hexafluorophosphate?

Now of course, having a serious interest in environmental issues, a professional life as a chemist, an interest in electrochemistry, and experience with hydrogen fluoride, I do have some immediate insight to that question.

For other people, there's Wikipedia:

Lithium hexafluorophosphate

When I was a kid, I managed a peptide synthesis laboratory. Some guys that worked for me, spilled maybe 50 ml of liquid HF in the hood. I kicked them out of the lab, suited up, and cleaned it up myself with calcium carbonate, because even if they were incompetent enough to leak it - which was my fault inasmuch as their training was obviously insufficient - I didn't want them to die or suffer serious intractable chemical burns.

I thought about this chemistry when all those rich people's homes in Pacific Palisades burned. I'll bet many of them had Tesla's and solar cells, maybe the swell cadmium telluride versions of solar cells.

After all, they're not scientists (largely) but entertainers, business people and the like. Many of them have surely bought into the "solar will save the world" and "electric cars are green" bullshit that flies around from people who think that "nuclear energy is too dangerous" but burning batteries aren't, and "nuclear energy is too expensive" but a fucking burning planet isn't "too expensive."

As best I can tell, the thermal decomposition of cadmium telluride requires access to the scientific literature which I have access:

Here's a very recent paper on the topic, a timely ASAP paper: Zalak S. Kachhia, Sunil H. Chaki, Ranjan Kr. Giri, Zubin R. Parekh, Rohitkumar M. Kannaujiya, Anilkumar B. Hirpara, M.P. Deshpande, Jiten P. Tailor, Thermal decomposition study of cadmium telluride (CdTe), Materials Today: Proceedings, 2023 (In Press as of this writing)

The text:



Now, the decomposition was followed in this case under argon in a gas jacketed TGA/DSC.

This is very different than the case in oxygen/water.

The cadmium, happily seems to be retained in the melted glass in solar cells, and most of the weight loss on the thermal heating is associated with the release of tellurium.

This said, HF dissolves glass, so I wouldn't want to breath the air where solar cells are being burned in the presence of one of Musk's Powerwalls..

As for the released tellurium, it burns in air to form tellurium tetroxide, a suspect teratogen.

Of course, the issue here isn't really about the toxicology of the ashes of Pacific Palisades. It's really about the grand success of the fucking carrying on about magical solar and batteries didn't do a fucking thing to prevent the fires, and half a century of antinuke bullshit and magical thinking about the useless, expensive, and toxic solar cells left the damned planet in flames.

There will be health consequences for the people who fought that fire, much like the WTC fires and the Iraqi burn pits.

Of course, there won't be the same carrying on about any of this that there was about Fukushima, although there's zero evidence that anyone actually died from radiation releases there and no one gives a shit about the people who died there from seawater and the resulting toxicology of the debris of a destroyed coastal city.

Got it?

No?

I couldn't care less.

If I sound angry, it may be because I am so.

I'm not amused that the sales of Teslas and Powerwalls worked to bring down one of the world's greatest and oldest democracies, and placed in the hands of a virulent racist, so there's that.

Have a swell day tomorrow.