Engineering Students Use Sound Waves To

Extinguish Fires
By Shariqua Ahmed on April 21, 2015
CCSS NAS-2 Grades 5-8 Word Search
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Water, foam, sand, blankets, and even baking soda are well-known solutions to putting out
flames. But sound waves? That has to be a first. But that is exactly what two young
engineers from George Mason University are using to douse small fires.
Electrical and computer engineering students Viet Tran and Seth Robertson were looking
for an interesting idea for their senior research project. That's when they stumbled upon an
experiment conducted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA ) in
2012. Called "acoustic suppression of flame" it was abandoned after the agency was
unable to determine its effectiveness on a large scale.
Tran and Robertson decided to challenge themselves and see if they could take the
research to the next level and build a fire extinguisher that could be used commercially. As
with any radical idea, they faced a lot of skepticism even from faculty members many of
whom declined to serve as advisors. After all, neither of the students were chemical
engineers so what could they possibly know about creating a fire extinguisher? The
students were finally able to convince Professor Brian Mark who agreed to oversee the
project and not fail them, if they were unable to make the concept work.
The young engineers first tried to extinguish the fire by placing a subwoofer near a flame
created using rubbing alcohol. But they soon realized that 'music' is not such a good idea
since it is inconsistent and unpredictable. The next option was exposing the fire to 20,000
to 30,000 hertz frequencies. However with the high frequencies, the flames only vibrated.
The duo hit a home run when they reduced the frequency to about 30 to 60 hertz. Turns out
that at these low frequencies, the sound vibrates the oxygen away from the flames. With
no fuel to keep them going, the fire suffocates and dies.
 The 20 lbs prototype that looks like an antique
milk can is connected to a well-ventilated amp. A bass speaker fixed above the
barrel amplifies and directs the sound waves. While it can currently put out only small
alcohol-fueled fires, the students hope to make it work for other flammable chemicals as
well. Also, although Tran and Robertson had initially envisioned the handheld extinguisher
to be for home or space use, they now believe it could even work for larger fires. A local fire
department has already shown interest in testing the extinguisher on a structure fire, in the
hopes of replacing toxic and messy chemicals with clean sound waves!
Though the young students appear to have convinced many of the initial skeptics, Kenneth
E Isman, a clinical professor at the University of Maryland's fire-protection engineering
department, is not amongst them. He believes that while the extinguisher may be good
enough to put out small pan fires, it will not be able to deal with larger domestic fires. He is
also concerned that the sound waves do not cool the flames down. This means that the
minute they get exposed to oxygen they could easily rekindle.

However, Tran and Robertson

are not letting naysayers stray them from their goal. They are forging ahead with their idea,
this time with the full support of the University who is even helping them apply for a
 provisional patent. If they do succeed, there may be soon be a time when fire trucks will be
extinguishing flames with some sweet music, instead of messy toxic chemicals!
Resources: washingtonpost.com, cnn.com, theguardian.com

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Reading Comprehension (3 questions)

1. How did Tran and Robertson get the idea to use sound waves?
2. Why did they have a hard time finding an advisor?

Critical Thinking Challenge

What lesson can you learn from Tran's and Robertson's...

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 mr silly22 days ago
cool!!!!!!!!
0 Reply


LITYYYYYYy2 months ago
Thats cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
0 Reply

YUPP2 months ago
yess that is very cool
1 Reply

 halo2 months ago

cool video
1 Reply

 my name i deez3 months ago

no way it is true
1 Reply


salvador23 months ago
wow finally people found that low and high frequency can make sound waves that can cancel out
flames but also sometimes these thinks can malfunction
2 Reply

lil uzi vert3 months ago
this is unbelievable
2 Reply


my name is jeff5 months ago
Deeznuts
1 Reply

o
yalo4 months ago
 oh snap it is dat boi
1 Reply


ccsd5 months ago
so cool!!!!!!!!
1 Reply


Damion5 months ago
cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
1 Reply

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8050032532-dep

THE HINDU

What India needs to do for reliability, security and affordability of

electric supply
The cost of electricity can be divided into plant-level costs, grid-level costs,
and other costs. Plant-level costs consist of capital, operation and
maintenance, and fuelling cost. Capital cost is reflected in the cost of
generation by way of interest on debt and return on equity. For nuclear power
plants, capital cost is high, but fuelling cost is low. For coal-fired power
plants, capital cost is low, but fuelling cost is high. The capital cost of solar
and wind is continuously decreasing; fuelling cost is nil.
Electricity reaches a consumer through the grid. Laying a grid needs
significant investment. A distributor buys electricity from a generator, adds
transmission and distribution charges, a charge to recover technical losses,
operating expenses, and his profit to determine the tariff to be charged from a
consumer. Since several generators are connected to the grid, interaction with
the grid and grid-management policies influence the working of a generator.
At present, electricity markets do not assign any price to system effects, that
is, to the complex interactions among various generators connected to the
grid.
In recent years, a large capacity based on variable renewable energy (VRE)
sources has been connected to the grid. These sources are intermittent, but get
priority feed-in due to nil fuelling cost. A grid manager must ensure that
enough dispatchable generation capacity is connected to the grid to meet the
peak load in the evening when solar power is not available. Dispatchable
generation is provided by baseload technologies like coal and nuclear, and by
large hydropower.
Grid-level costs have several components: grid connection, grid extension and
reinforcement, short-term balancing costs, and long-term costs for
maintaining adequate back-up supply. VRE sources demand much higher
back-up, grid connection and reinforcement costs. This aspect needs attention
during policy formulation.
In December 2016, the Central Electricity Authority issued a draft national
electricity plan (DNEP), which refers to system effect and resulting system
cost at several places.
The emphasis on VRE sources without any investment in energy storage has
converted daily load profile for dispatchable generating stations into a “duck
curve”, that is, with a reduced electricity load during the day when solar is
available and a rapid ramp up in the evening. This lowers the capacity factor
of dispatchable generators. The DNEP acknowledges technological and
operational challenges posed by the integration of VRE into the grid. It
highlights the loss of generation efficiency, high maintenance cost, and higher
emissions of combined cycle plants due to cycling and ramping. It details grid
integration cost of VRE in qualitative terms.
A recent report by the Department of Energy, U.S., highlights another
element that is smoothening of transients in the grid by the inertia of the
rotating mass present in thermal power plants, while solar plants have no such
feature.
System costs have been quantified by the Nuclear Energy Agency of the
OECD and differ across countries depending on the extent of presence of
sources like natural gas. According to this quantification, system cost of VRE
sources is much higher than nuclear and coal. True parity of VRE sources will
be achieved only when the sum of generation cost and system cost matches
with that from dispatchable sources.

Other costs
Other costs include those arising from the influence of electricity generation
on health, influence on existing generation capacity due to adding new
capacity, cost of accidents, security of supplies and net energy gain for
society.
In the Economic Survey 2016-17 (Volume 2), an attempt has been made to
estimate grid-level costs and some other costs. The survey uses the term
‘social cost of carbon’ to represent economic cost of greenhouse gas
emissions. It also adds health costs, costs of intermittency, opportunity cost of
land, cost of government incentives and cost arising from stranded assets. It,
thus, includes not only system cost, but a significant part of other costs as
well. It estimates that the total social cost of renewables was ₹11 per kWh,
around three times that of coal.
Conventional metrics like levellised cost of electricity generation cannot be
relied on to compare intermittent and dispatchable electric supply options.
India’s electricity requirements are enormous. It doesn’t need a ‘technology
versus technology’ debate, but a policy framework that integrates all low-
carbon energy technologies with coal in a manner that ensures reliability and
security of electric supply along with affordability and climate-resilient
development.
R.B. Grover is Homi Bhabha Chair, Department of Atomic Energy, and
member, Atomic Energy Commission