Unchartered hazards

As the world shifts away from combustion engines to electric vehicles, many industries face important challenges, especially when it comes to transporting dangerous goods like explosives. The complexities of safely moving these materials in a rapidly changing landscape raise questions that need urgent answers.

Electric vehicles are powered by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. While we might be familiar with seeing these types of cars and buses on the road, other vehicles such as trucks are also transitioning to electric. And in the future, this could extend to the trucks used to transport explosives or ammonium nitrate.

The safety of lithium-ion batteries is a concern for the commercial explosives industry as not much is known about the relationship between the two.

Daniel Brocklebank is a UNSW Sydney School of Chemistry Master's student. He is working with Orica to identify and address what happens when lithium-ion batteries and explosives combine.

“Electric vehicles and combustion vehicles generally have similar consequences when burned,” says Brocklebank. “But some specific circumstances can lead to electric vehicles having more severe reactions.”

So, when transporting explosives or ammonium nitrate, will electric vehicles require extra precautions?

“We want to ensure that if we bring together this generally safe energy system and these products with well documented and manageable risks, that there are no unforeseen hazards that we won’t know how to manage,” Brocklebank says.

Challenges & opportunities

Orica is a major Australian manufacturer that supplies the world’s mining industries with commercial explosives and blasting systems. The company won the 2024 Australian Financial Review (AFR) Sustainability Leader award for impact.

Orica research fellow David Piper met Brocklebank at the start of his Master's journey, when the question of what they would work on together, with Piper as an industry supervisor, was still a mystery. They agreed to pinpoint a potential issue that could arise from a sustainable future goal for Orica.

“One way to reach our goals is to transition to electric vehicles,” Piper says. “These can be powered by renewable resources, rather than greenhouse gas emitting vehicles.”

On-site, their vehicles primarily run on diesel.

“We haven’t seen any reports on how batteries and explosives interact,” Brocklebank says. “So it’s an entirely new area to investigate, which is also exciting.”

He says this does have its challenges.

“How do we perform experiments in a safe manner, and, when reactions occur, how do we determine what has taken place with the information that we do have available?”

While Brocklebank’s Master's research project covers a lot of new ground, he says there is still much to learn.

“We completed a series of explosive tests on different types of lithium-ion batteries and found that the battery construction and chemistry does influence the survivability, safety and performance of the damaged batteries,” he says.

“We also found that battery components and explosive materials can react when combined in a more complex manner than mixing fuel with the explosives would.

“We still need to understand if battery failures in an emergency situation would be capable of initiating an explosion.”

Future focused

This research allows Orica to be a world leader in this space.

“We are actively involved with UN regulators to establish regulations for the transportation of dangerous goods with electric vehicles,” Brocklebank says.

Piper says the research also helps ensure the safety of not only Orica employees, but for all in the field of dangerous goods transportation worldwide.

“This partnership between Orica and UNSW is mutually beneficial,” he says. “UNSW has many research groups with battery expertise, pushing the boundaries of what batteries are capable of.”

Brocklebank says Orica is the ideal industry partner for the project, as a global explosives company with decades of experience in handling and dealing with dangerous goods. The company has the facilities and expertise for explosive testing that UNSW lacks.

“This research involving both batteries and explosives would not be able to be carried out in the same way without this partnership,” he says. “Together we’ve opened up the possibilities of what can be explored – and solved.”