Geoff Bruder, an aerospace engineer who researched thermal energy conversion at NASA, co-founded Sonic Fire Tech with the goal of offering a novel alternative to fire protection. Water isn’t always available and can cause serious damage when used to put out fires, while chemicals can have serious health and environmental effects. But what if you could use sound to put out fires?
Sonic Fire Tech has pattened an ingenious technology that uses low-frequency sound waves to break up the chemical reaction that fuels fire. Heat, fuel and oxygen are the ingredients for fire, and taking away just one can stop the combustion reaction completely. Using infrasound waves to push oxygen molecules away from the fuel, this technology prevents fires from getting the oxygen they need to sustain themselves.
“It’s basically vibrating the oxygen faster than the fuel can use it, so you block the chemical reaction,” Geoff Bruder explained.
Interestingly, Sonic Fire Tech doesn’t claim to have pioneered the use of sound to fight fires. According to Scientific American Magazine, the effect of acoustics on fire is well-documented. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency spent years studying it in the early 2000s, and academic researchers have been experimenting with it for decades.
“Acoustic influence on flames is well known in combustion,” Albert Simeoni, head of the department of fire protection engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, told Scientific American. “The challenge is to scale up the technology without creating disrupting or even damaging sound effects.”
Sonic Fire Tech solved the challenge researchers have been struggling with for years by using infrasound. The company’s technology produces low-frequency sound waves at 20hz or lower that are inaudible to the human ear, but very effective against fire because they travel farther than higher-frequency waves.
The San Bernardino County Fire Department recently tested a wearable fire-fighting device designed by Sonic Fire Tech, but the company offers domestic solutions that can be elegantly integrated in any home. They are activated by sensors and can put out fires without damaging furniture or flooding the floor.
“A water sprinkler system is highly ineffective at putting out a grease fire; it actually spreads the fire and makes it worse. Yet, we’re mandated to have sprinklers above our kitchen stoves,” Sonic Fire Tech’s Remington Hotchkis told CBS News. “Our system was shown to suppress the fire, prevent the ignition from occurring with a autonomous detection device.”
Unfortunately, acoustics only works on small fires, so we probably won’t be seeing the technology being used on wildfires or any large scale fires anytime soon.
