Exploring the Cost and Feasibility of Battery-Electric Ships

A Lithium fire battery in a cruise ship in the middle of the Pacific would be a truly unique experience.

Almost as bad as a fuel oil fire on a cruise ship.

There's hope that sodium-ion tech will come to the rescue, here. The energy-density is bordering on 'good enough' but it's not quite there, yet.

There's other technologies that they're trialing for boats that seem silly but works on paper at least. We're currently building a ferry with a massive flywheel to store lots of rotational inertia to convert to electricity, which on the face of it is bonkers but again, the maths says it's good.

Lithium batteries are more prone to self-immolation/thermal runaway; heavy fuel oils aren't prone to spontaneous ignition at typical temperatures & pressures.

Use lithium ferrophosphate instead- no fire

I am counting my chickens before they hatch, but sulfur chemistries should help quite a lot. Same abundance of materials, 2x to 3x the energy density.

It's my impression that a lot of sulfur and other "advanced" chemistries are held up by operating restrictions like temperature for consumer vehicles, but industrial transport vehicles might not have such requirements because they have constant output.

Is LFP an option ? Thermal runaway, O2 venting, they go away AFAICT.

The ship would need to be designed around it, but the battery could be set up in a way to allow it to burn out without affecting the rest of the ship at all, it is not that hard to isolate a battery from the rest of the system.

Although it would be better if the battery is at the bottom of the ship so there would also need to be some sort of air exhaust system for when that happens, hopefully one that prevents the fumes from reaching the passengers at all but I don't think that would be possible without a chimney.

I would think that preventative measures would be much easier to realize on big ships with lower density demands

Furthermore, oil fires can be extinguished by water and/or CO2 - Lithium battery fires can't be smothered and require exponentially more water to bring under control (producing copious amounts of heavily contaminated water too). And once put out can easily re-ignite.

There's no need to lie. Lithium battery fires are a fucking nightmare.