Water and electricity don't mix, right? Well actually, pure water is an excellent insulator and does not conduct electricity. The thing is, you won't find any pure water in nature, so don't mix electricity and water. Our Water Science School page will give you all the details.
www.usgs.gov
Might want to read this....
Also, you wont have to boil the water out of a water bottle before it explodes from the pressure. Keep it sealed and it will open on it own faster and spread water over everything.
Also most car manufactories have there packs in coolant that is likely 90% water.
Yeah. It says salts make it more conductive. So much so that sea water is more conductive than humans are.
Your statement was originally that water isn't very conductive at all 'unless salts are added' (to paraphrase a bit). You stated that salts wont be present, so conductivity isn't a concern.
I refuted the claim that water isn't particularly conductive without salts by simply stating that salt is not the only dissolved solid that can, and does, increase conductivity.
Again, source: My
calibrated conductivity meter at work that I use every single week.
Our system uses no salts. In fact, its tested for such things specifically to avoid the corrosion problems associated with them. And yet, the conductivity is typically rather high from other non-salt dissolved solids.
Regarding getting it to open sooner, yes. You could use a thin film over the port leading to the battery. However, you still have to have a sufficient amount of water to put it out. You would need the water container to be built into the lid of the system to transfer as much heat as possible and honestly, by the time the fire is large enough to boil a few gallons of water - the system is already ruined and chances are the fire has spread.
But if everything is perfectly designed,
and everything is sufficiently isolated from other flammable stuff (typically via distance)
and you can heat your water up reasonably fast via a fire in your battery box
and the stars align nicely. Sure. The water might help.
However, all of those things combined would mean the battery could just burn itself to the ground before anything else catches fire.