Battery Acid Spill Cleanup?

Technical Electrical
#1

Even though we use SLA (Sealed Lead Acid) batteries in frc. You might get unlucky one day and end up with a battery spilling. It’s always a good idea to be prepared.

What is your team’s procedure for a battery spill?

This is what I have,

Notify, First clear the area, notify a safety caption and mentors.
Protect your hands and face, Before touching the battery spill make sure you have safety goggles, and a pair of gloves made out of rubber, nitrile or latex.
Neutralize, After you have put on PPE, you cover all of the spilled area with a generous amount of baking soda. Put baking soda on until it stops fizzing and bubbling.
Contain, Once the area is neutralized, carefully lift the battery into two gallon size ziploc bags and then into a thick plastic bin.
Neutralize, Neutralize the area again.
Clean, Now you will have to clean all of the neutralized acid from the area. To do this use a shop towel to sweep it all into one pile. Then safely pick it up with the towel and put it into a separate bag along with any other contaminated items including your gloves. Finally seal the bag shut. You can also use a plastic shovel and a brush to pick it up.

Let me know if I am missing anything, or if you have any suggestions or comments. What else do you add in your battery spill instructions? What’s in your spill kits?

6 Likes
#2

That’s very well thought out. Ive seen similar before but not to as much detail.

2 Likes
#3

Seems solid and what’s generally recommended.
What I prefer to do with SLAs and the standard lead-acid batteries is have a large bucket of the neutralizing material ready to go, as you can pour that onto the spill, then put the entire battery straight into the bucket with any remaining material. When batteries spill there’s typically still pockets of acid that’ll get out as the battery is moved.
Ziploc bags are sketchy with an FRC battery (some of them like to leak), and a car battery really should be in a rigid container.

A 5-gallon bucket also counts as a seat so it’s not just eating into you limited pit space.

5 Likes
#4

Maybe it’s just me but I always thought all the battery safety warnings were over-exaggerated. In my 11 years in FRC I’ve seen maybe two batteries actually spill, neither of them were at competition. While you wouldn’t want to get 5M H2SO4 in your eyes or on large portions of your skin, it’s isn’t a fast moving danger. It doesn’t really make a difference if the spill is neutralized within 10 seconds or a few minutes after being discovered.

Having such strict written procedure for something so unlikely and relatively low-urgency seems unnecessary to me. One team with some baking soda and a good trash bag should really be all that’s required. Even if it takes a few minutes to find the materials, the spill doesn’t spread like fire and won’t bleed out like someone with a laceration. I’m much more concerned at competition with the large number of people in an enclosed space with increased fire hazard or teams that run the robots in the pits with untrained people standing feet away than even teams standing on these batteries to get to something off a high shelf.