Originally Posted by
FlyJSH
I'm splitting hairs here, but it could be extinguished if it were cooled sufficiently. Cool it far enough that the energy dissipation is too low to permit the temperature to increase to the flashpoint of the battery or surrounding materials: no fire.
Have to disagree on this. Maybe in a laboratory under perfect conditions with the right resources on hand you could pull this off. However my years of training in hazardous materials specialist leave me saying it would be nearly impossible to fully contain a Li-ion battery fire. Temperature wouldn't stop the reaction to both oxygen and water (even humidity in the air is enough to add to this reaction). The lithium itself is oxidizing on contact with the air, and rapid oxidation=fire. It doesn't need other materials around it to burn. Lithium, sodium, potassium, and all the other ums all react this way. It will continue to react unless you could somehow get it to the negative -100C range, that's pretty hard to maintain. And even at that temp it's going to continue to react, just at a slightly slower rate.
Metal box full of water, throw it in, close the lid and let it burn... sorry about your iTunes songs buddy. The large volume of water would be enough to compensate for the heat. Unfortunately this doesn't work for the cargo hold unless we start transporting blue wales in the hold like some Star Trek IV level stuff. Dang wales and their PEDs...