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Putting out
fires in the kitchen such as grease, or oven
fires, and other types of fires using sound waves is
now a reality thanks to engineering students Viet Tran and Seth Robertson at George Mason University.
The engineering students built a prototype that
can extinguish flames using low-frequency sound waves.
It fits comfortably as a 20-pound backpack.
The students faced an uphill battle from the
beginning. They were skeptical, and so was the faculty.
Brian Mark said in a press release: “My initial impression was that it wouldn’t work,”
“Some students take the safe path, but Viet and Seth took the higher-risk option.
High risks exist because DARPA has
experimented with sound-based fire extinguishers for years.
These experiments had showed that sound can disrupt flames by changing air velocity and vaporizing fuel. This spreads out the fire, lowers its temperature, and
as a result literally shuts off combustion.
At the time DARPA's project and others, at the time no one could
not figure out how to make the idea compact and useful.
So it never really got off the ground.
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After Robertson and Tran
designed a compact unit, they patented their
technology. The goal is for larger versions of their invention
for use on forest fires, extinguishing
homes, building too . And for usage
utilizing drones.
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