Scifi Scenario... How Ubiquitous Would Bomb Energy Dense Batteries Be For Practical and Safety Reasons?

[Spacescifi]

In Star Trek and to a lesser extent Star Wars settings, high energy power banks/batteries are common place. Especially with regard to the DEW pistols everyone and their mom is packing heat with. But I am thinking about something far more mundane.

The vacuum. Yes the humble vacuum and it's annoying wire you have to worry about getting caught around corners as you work.

Apply those energy dense batteries to that and boom, no more need for a long and frustrating cord.

And yes, I know such already exist but I am talking about higher energy dense ones than exist in real life.

As in charge it 4 hours and it can run for 4 days without a cord attached at all.

Question: If such a vacuum powerbank (small enough to fit in one too because scifi) existed, and it become overheated for some reason (because little Timmy wants to set the powerbank on fire with burning wood outside because he likes seeing stuff go boom), how big of a boom would a house vacuum battery make that can run a vacuum for 4 days straight on a full charge?

Is this grenade level? Is it going to leave a crater in the backyard and little Timmy is going to be grounded all summer long lol.

Or did I exaggerate the power level too much?

Also how much do you think high power portable banks would be used as opposed to wiring in a setting were obvious safety concerns are a thing?

 

One thing that I found amusing is that TNG handheld Star Trek phasers could be set to overload and explode with enough force to blow a room apart like a bomb.

Realistically if they contain that much energy already, do you really want to be taking them into firefights where they could get hit by high by high energy beams and possibly trigger an explosion?

Unless triggering them much is much like a nuke, meaning just blowing it up won't do but it has to start a complex chain reaction only the weapon itself can typically do (kind of like the fact how nuclear reactors have more potential energy than their actual output, but to release it all at once would be a like a bomb, and they are not designed to do that anyway).

 

Your thoughts?

 

Edited Monday at 04:43 AM by Spacescifi

[Ultimate Steve]

3 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

 

Question: If such a vacuum powerbank (small enough to fit in one too because scifi) existed, and it become overheated for some reason (because little Timmy wants to set the powerbank on fire with burning wood outside because he likes seeing stuff go boom), how big of a boom would a house vacuum battery make that can run a vacuum for 4 days straight on a full charge?

 

I see a range of 500W-3000W for a vacuum cleaner, I will assume a 2000W vacuum. That would be about 691 megajoules of energy. This is equivalent to about 5.7 gallons of gasoline, or around 2500 F1 hand grenades (I couldn't find good numbers for more modern hand grenades - Maybe like 500-1000?), or the amount of power an average American household uses in a week, or 165 kilograms of TNT, or about 700 twinkies, or about 2-3 electric vehicle battery packs.

Those things all have different effects, so it would largely depend on the rate of energy release from these hypothetical batteries. Intuitively I would expect it to be similar to an electric vehicle fire but faster, but the battery technology we are talking about would be so significantly different from anything we have now that I have no idea how it would behave in a failure scenario.

[magnemoe]

3 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I see a range of 500W-3000W for a vacuum cleaner, I will assume a 2000W vacuum. That would be about 691 megajoules of energy. This is equivalent to about 5.7 gallons of gasoline, or around 2500 F1 hand grenades (I couldn't find good numbers for more modern hand grenades - Maybe like 500-1000?), or the amount of power an average American household uses in a week, or 165 kilograms of TNT, or about 700 twinkies, or about 2-3 electric vehicle battery packs.

Those things all have different effects, so it would largely depend on the rate of energy release from these hypothetical batteries. Intuitively I would expect it to be similar to an electric vehicle fire but faster, but the battery technology we are talking about would be so significantly different from anything we have now that I have no idea how it would behave in a failure scenario.

Yes with more energy density you will get an more energetic fire. Think gunpowder burning, like gunpowder you also don't need oxygen for the fire and if you try to contain it, it explodes. 
I assume batteries like this would be restricted the way gunpowder and other explosives is. Now its probably ways to make these batteries safer even if it cost some performance. 

[darthgently]

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Yes with more energy density you will get an more energetic fire. Think gunpowder burning, like gunpowder you also don't need oxygen for the fire and if you try to contain it, it explodes. 
I assume batteries like this would be restricted the way gunpowder and other explosives is. Now its probably ways to make these batteries safer even if it cost some performance. 

Something analogous to control rods in a reactor perhaps.  But on a molecular nano-sci-fi level.

[Nuke]

high explosives are actually a really stable high energy storage medium, but nobody uses it for batteries. it its very difficult to use the stored energy efficiently. you can do some kind of ice but those are around 25% efficient.

[magnemoe]

6 hours ago, Nuke said:

high explosives are actually a really stable high energy storage medium, but nobody uses it for batteries. it its very difficult to use the stored energy efficiently. you can do some kind of ice but those are around 25% efficient.

Not all high explosives are very stable like nitroglycerin.
I assume that gunpowder and solid rocket fuel is more energetic, but they don't detonate and are easier to set off. 

The wet dream battery uses air as in oxygen as one part. You don't need to carry the air unless underwater or in space and shutting off air intake and its pretty inert. 
Only downside in a plane as it get heaver as drained. 

[Spacescifi]

On 1/13/2025 at 12:08 AM, Ultimate Steve said:

I see a range of 500W-3000W for a vacuum cleaner, I will assume a 2000W vacuum. That would be about 691 megajoules of energy. This is equivalent to about 5.7 gallons of gasoline, or around 2500 F1 hand grenades (I couldn't find good numbers for more modern hand grenades - Maybe like 500-1000?), or the amount of power an average American household uses in a week, or 165 kilograms of TNT, or about 700 twinkies, or about 2-3 electric vehicle battery packs.

Those things all have different effects, so it would largely depend on the rate of energy release from these hypothetical batteries. Intuitively I would expect it to be similar to an electric vehicle fire but faster, but the battery technology we are talking about would be so significantly different from anything we have now that I have no idea how it would behave in a failure scenario.

So Timmy is going to be in a lot more trouble than getting grounded because the fire department might need to get involved (because backyard/house<flames).

Wow.