Fire Extinguisher via Sound Waves
Posted: Mon Mar 30, 2015 9:23 pm
Viet Tran and Seth Robertson, engineering students at George Mason University, have invented a fire extinguisher that uses sound waves to put out fires. The based their research on one DARPA project called Prometheus, whose goal is to address the problem of fighting fires not from a chemical perspective (foams or other chemical retardants, many of which surpass water in efficacy) but from a physical perspective. The primary considerations were fires in enclosed locations (such as on a naval vessel, an enclosed workspace underground/underwater, or in space)--it is a bad idea to try and use a typical extinguisher in zero-g. The basic principle is to use sound waves to push the oxygen away from the flames, by which I presume they are creating small pockets of relative vacuum sufficient to stop the rapid oxidation process which causes flames.
If this device can be made commercially available it will see practical application in all sorts of places where fighting fires without using possibly destructive chemicals is necessary, such as hospitals or even personal homes.
If this device can be made commercially available it will see practical application in all sorts of places where fighting fires without using possibly destructive chemicals is necessary, such as hospitals or even personal homes.