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Fire in Alibaba Cloud computer room: How should data centers respond to lithium battery explosions?

     Since the fire broke out at around 8AM on September 10, by 5PM 11th Sept, the computer room fire caused abnormal network access and some cloud product services in Availability Zone C of Alibaba Cloud Singapore has lasted for 33 hours, and no fire has been completely eliminated. According to foreign media, the incident has caused severe disruptions to services hosted by major technology companies such as Lazada and ByteDance.

Source: Singapore Lianhe Zaobao
     At present, the cause of the fire in the computer room and the progress of handling more incidents have been revealed. After the fire lasted for more than 30 hours, why it could not be put out quickly and how to deal with such fires have also become the focus of discussion. According to the updated incident progress of Alibaba Cloud’s official “Singapore Availability Zone C Computer Room Fire” announcement (hereinafter referred to as the fire announcement), the cause of the fire and temperature rise in the Singapore computer room was the explosion of lithium batteries. According to “8 Vision News Network”, when the incident occurred, some people heard an explosion before the incident. Thick smoke billowed out from the data center, and a pungent burning smell could be smelled at the scene.
     According to the report, the means of extinguishing the fire in this incident included water cannons, indoor sprinkler fire extinguishing systems, fire extinguishing robots, etc. Industry insiders pointed out that water firefighting is not advisable as a means of suppressing lithium battery fires.
Source: 8 Vision News Network

       The response to lithium battery fires mainly includes two aspects: rapid fire extinguishing and efficient cooling. Rapid fire extinguishing is to significantly reduce the thermal damage caused by flames to adjacent batteries and other equipment; efficient cooling is to suppress the chain decomposition reaction inside the battery, prevent the battery from re-igniting and thermal runaway, and can also effectively reduce the impact on adjacent batteries. Among the fire extinguishing agents, perfluorohexanone has shown the ability to quickly extinguish open flames outside the battery. It has a high safety margin and is friendly to the environment. After eruption, it can quickly vaporize, quickly absorb a large amount of heat, and isolate oxygen in the air, to achieve suffocation and fire extinguishing. The inadvisability of water firefighting is determined by the characteristics of lithium batteries. When a fire breaks out in a lithium battery, moisture may cause the battery to short-circuit, thereby exacerbating the fire. In addition, water reacts violently with the positive and negative electrode materials and electrolyte of lithium batteries, and the gas and heat generated may cause explosions and aggravate fire accidents. Some people also believe that water can be an effective means to extinguish fires and suppress re-ignition. Regarding the cause of the lithium battery explosion, the industry insider pointed out that the safety of the lithium battery itself has been verified in many aspects, and this incident may be affected by many factors such as the external environment. The specific cause needs to wait for the investigation results.

    According to Singapore’s Lianhe Zaobao, the data center is located on Luoyang Avenue and is owned by Digital Realty, an American data center real estate investment trust. After the fire broke out, as 7PM that day, heavy smoke was still rising from two places in the data center where the fire broke out. At least two fire trucks were parked in the center, and five emergency vehicles of the Civil Defense Force, including fire trucks, were also parked on the road. beside.

Source: Singapore Lianhe Zaobao
    Firefighters used four water cannons to extinguish the fire, and the sprinkler system in the house was also activated. About 20 people evacuated themselves before the arrival of civil defense personnel. No one was injured in the accident. The fire announcement shows that at 01:46 AM on the 11th, in compliance with local fire protection requirements, as fire watering continued, water accumulation and leakage began to occur in the computer room, and there was a risk of short circuit in the circuit. The entire computer room building in Singapore Availability Zone C had an emergency power outage. Business networks in other buildings in Availability Zone C have been gradually restored. According to reports, the Civil Defense Force has sent a fire-extinguishing robot to the site to cool the battery room, and civil defense personnel were still on site at 10AM on the 11th to wet the building to ensure the safety of the building. As of 5PM on the 11th, Alibaba Cloud officially showed that there were 15 service abnormalities in Singapore nodes.
Article source: China IDC Circle

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