Startup says sound waves can replace fire sprinklers; experts aren’t so sure

Acoustic fire suppression goes commercial.

See full article...

 

[Rick C.]

Do current water fire sprinklers still have a low temperature melting metal on the tip that melts and releases the water on ‘heated’ sprinklers? Or are they now all controlled centrally and all go off at the same time? A whole house-worth of sprinklers going off when the fire is just in a small localized area will obviously create very expensive water damage throughout the house.

 

[spacespektr]

On the article directly, it sounds like a case of maybe them having something with a potentially useful niche (at the right price), but trying to over market it. This seems like more of a "first line of defense" thing, if it works well enough then maybe it can be deployed aggressively to try to stop things very early, but if that doesn't work a sprinkler is still needed. I suppose it's also true that there are lots of places that do not and probably will never have sprinklers, too expensive to retrofit. So again at the right price/flexibility/design, maybe infrasound could have a role in a "better then nothing" way. But the fact that it doesn't actually reduce heat isn't something they can get around, and is an extra worry in an age of ever more lithium batteries everywhere. Not everything needs external oxygen, sometimes you just plain need to cool something down.

The question then would be: are they hyping it up just as part of the typical, or is it because they've actually spent enough on R&D that an honest niche isn't enough for them (or their VC or whatever)? If it's the former that's not necessarily a killer, plenty of products that were "we can do so much with this!!" ended up making not-change-the-world money but very decent money in some specific context. But if they're in all-or-nothing mode then sounds like this might crash and burn (harhar).

Right, even if some stone/whatever building was perfectly fireproof and the building itself was fine after a room burned, a room burning, or even "merely" just some furniture or counter area or something, could still be an expensive mess. Or simply a sad mess, lots of us have things that aren't really worth anything on the market but have sentimental value. A fire extinguisher on hand to stop something quick isn't some enormous investment.

Yeah, this might make sense in a commercial/industrial context where you want layers of defense.

The question with residential use is whether this high tech solution degrades over time? A business can accept replacing the tech every 5 years as a cost of doing business — so long as the benefits/reduced risk pencil out. Homeowners aren’t going to do that. So will the components last for 10-20 years? If sonic Fire Tech can’t prove that, it’s probably a nonstarter for home use.

 

[xoa]

Life safety and physics don’t change across a county line. (And yes, building codes are universal and can apply anywhere. You haven’t read a model code if you don’t understand that)

How do universal codes deal with wildly different local "practical physics" a building is subjected to that clearly absolutely do change across a "county line"? Ie, much of the US simply does not have earthquakes, tornadoes or hurricanes or snow/ice storms or the like in the way other areas do. How does a universal code account for the needs of California on a fault vs coastal Florida vs inland Maine vs Minnesota or wherever? Or are you thinking some sort of baseline with local additions? Does it take it into account relative material abundance or skillsets? I mean, certainly I can see the value in more standards for stuff that is shared, lots of infrastructure bits of homes, egress rules and so on are indeed pretty universal. But other aspects of construction and design seem pretty inherently local.

 

[Rick C.]

On another note, even though I had the volume turned down to the last notch on my iPad for the demo video, the sound from the fire alarm in the video woke up all of my dogs, two of them in another room. They really react to that frequency.

 

[Dmytry]

The curtains are shopping around sure, but they’re not being blown. I’m not an expert on sound, but I’d guess the appeal here is the vibration that is shaking the air rather than just blowing it. Shaking results in moving molecules without spreading them.

It still has to put the fire out somehow. Infrasound is just bulk air movement, the speed of sound is around 340 m/s so at the frequency of 20 Hz the wavelength is 17 meters.

Moving the air back and forth would increase mixing between air and fuel, which can put the mixture outside the flammable range, effectively blowing out the fire. That same thing happening at the surface of a glowing ember will make it burn hotter.

 

[xoa]

The question with residential use is whether this high tech solution degrades over time? A business can accept replacing the tech every 5 years as a cost of doing business — so long as the benefits/reduced risk pencil out. Homeowners aren’t going to do that.

Well, depends on the price and difficulty of replacing it doesn't it? Homeowners replace plenty of stuff or have maintenance performed on a fairly regular schedule, from water treatment to things like smoke alarms themselves (batteries first, then the device less often). If you can just unplug a thing and plug in a new thing and the cost of that part is low 5 years would be no big deal. Might be something that insurers would be interested in encouraging as well as part of their renewals. If it's expensive/challenging then sure, wouldn't pencil out.

 

[jhesse]

Uh, what? No, if you see a grease fire or something similar absolutely the first thing you try to do is just put it out. If it's just starting then something as simple as dumping a bunch of baking soda on it can be good enough.

People panic. I would not trust a significant percentage to act rational in an emergency.
Anecdata: I know someone who got extensive arm burns and nearly burned down the house because they tried carrying the grease fire outside.

 

[lasertekk]

While in school, I worked part time for a remediation company testing samples of residential and commercial properties for mold, asbestos, lead and other things...we even tested for the telltale chemicals of covert meth labs. A fully drenched house, from water fire extinguishers going off, might as well burn down. The insurance company will require a complete interior strip-down so there’s no future liability from any mold growth. Not as expensive as a complete rebuild from a complete house frame loss due to fire, but almost as bad. I can see where limiting any fires to just one localized area, without a full house fire extinguisher system going off, would be beneficial.

 

[ElCameron]

My thought was, did it turn off the stove?

I mean, if the fire started because of grease or overcooking, you HAVE to remove the heat source to keep it from reigniting.

Residential use seems very misplaced, and grotesquely optimistic. People get a fire, and they typically run.

Where I CAN see this being useful is in a commercial setting, since grease fires are going to be attended, and can't always be prevented. But you're going to have to train the AI to not start blasting the food if open flame and flare cooking are common (as they are for a lot of Asian/Eastern style cooking). And that, I can see, is less useful. So a manual activation would make more sense. The whole integration with AI is pretty stupid, and looks like the weakest link in this idea.

It would be pretty easy to integrate a gas line shutoff with the sprinkler system. I’m constantly surprised we don’t do that by default anyway in every gas install. Likely concerns about false alarms and having to reset the gas line.

My dream home just won’t have gas.

 

[freaq]

Any chance of hearing damage?
Seems potentially huge in datacenters where you have pricy equipment that you don’t want to hose or cover in chemicals.

Also at chemical plants where nasty types of fires are liting the types firefighters have (ofcourse if the fuel has o2 in it well not much you can Do with this)

Finally install size might be pretty bulky?
Still definitely interesting

 

[ElCameron]

I have a CO2 extinguisher in the kitchen and a 20lb CO2 tank hooked up for electrical fires in certain spaces. You need ~35% CO2 in a volume for most fires, those tanks' contents fill either 5 or 6000 liters uncompressed. So like 14x96gal trash bins. Plus you can rotate them for greenhouse use.

I really like a fire blanket for kitchen fires in addition to an extinguisher.

 

[McTurkey]

This seems more like a localized, targeted, automatic extinguisher system than a suppression system. It also relies on reliably detecting the source of the fire, not simply having enough heat to break the glass on the sprinkler bulb and distribute water over a wide area. And how do humans or animals react to getting in the path of one of these infrasound blasts? I might've missed it in the article, but I'd assume that any sort of obstruction between the emitter and the ignition area risks failure of the system. I just don't see how this could ever replace sprinklers in dynamic environments or where life safety is a concern. Augment, perhaps, but not replace.

 

[wastrel]

My first thought was that I wonder if someone is seriously thinking of this as the next great EV feature.

 

[lasertekk]

Do current water fire sprinklers still have a low temperature melting metal on the tip that melts and releases the water on ‘heated’ sprinklers? Or are they now all controlled centrally and all go off at the same time? A whole house-worth of sprinklers going off when the fire is just in a small localized area will obviously create very expensive water damage throughout the house.

Some utilize glass bulbs, some utilize what the industry calls ‘fusible links’, which are low temp melting metals. Either way, care must taken around them. The glass variety are easy to accidentally break, I saw this happen in a warehouse. The metal fusible versions can start to leak after 25-30 years.

 

[countbalo]

I’m surprised that houses in America have this kind of fire extinguisher.

In Europe we insist mainly on avoiding fire with furniture that resist fire and houses are built in concrete.

What is the reason to have fire extinguisher in a house ?

The thing to remember about the U.S. is that we have HUGE forest with long term replanting. Using the materials at hand means our homes here are wood. I have seen various stupid theories about why we build in wood but for whatever reason some people need a boogie man when there isn't one. My Uncle was a roofer and boxer (at least that's what he called himself, who am i to correct him) and he's really a framer (someone who frames up a home) and a roofer and over the years i've seen him get quite mad when someone starts in with "cheap" building supplies and lesser well built. For the natural supplies present our homes are quite good, That's not to say we don't have our corner cutters here. We do, but in general wood works well and is reasonably priced for what it is.

 

[xoa]

People panic. I would not trust a significant percentage to act rational in an emergency.

OK? But how does that track with not trying to put it out? Like, you literally then go on to write for your anecdote:

Anecdata: I know someone who got extensive arm burns and nearly burned down the house because they tried carrying the grease fire outside.

Right, so their move was to try to stop the fire, not just flee. They did so in a poorly chosen manner sure, but I don't see how this supports the contention that typically people would just immediately abandon their house? Would they have been better or worse off or the same if some infrasound system had immediately started suppressing the flame?

 

[lasertekk]

My dream home just won’t have gas.

My niece just moved into a freshly constructed duplex in the Los Angeles area, which used to be a small post WW2 “GI” 1000 sq foot home. It’s as modern as could be. Super insulated, solar panels on the rooftop, a heat pump water heater that ‘cools’ the insulated garage with its cold air output, a heat pump system for general cooling and heating, a electric panel pre-wired for an EV charger, electric clothes washer and dryer and yes, all electric kitchen appliances. No gas was run into the house. The property manager made mention of backup batteries being installed at a future date. Very cool.

 

[countbalo]

Um, no. There is no "THE MAN" for most of American homes, the majority are built by the people who first live in them. Those that aren't are still influenced by the competitive market created by those who do, and there are tradeoffs to building with much more expensive materials. The big obvious one being home size. There are real reasons that the American vs EU home average sizes look like this:
View attachment 134239
Now, I'm 100% open to arguments along the lines of "I'd rather live in a house half the size that had a 1% of the chance the to fully burn down in a fire", or arguments about historical value and looks etc. But at the same time I think it's very fair to recognize that other people would say "actually I want a bigger home that's easy to hack open the walls on so I can install upgraded networking or whatever later and do renovations on if I feel like it, and I'll take the risk and/or attempt to ameliorate the risk in different ways (active vs passive safety)". Right? There is rarely such a thing as a free lunch. Stick frame buildings are just fundamentally cheaper and more flexible to make and then alter later, and simultaneously are also much more fragile.

In fairness there are reinforcing effects in each market too. The ability to create homes in a given style at a given price also depends on the availability of labor and supply chains to support that, so if you've got much more of one style then another then in turn that will further tip the balance. But that also is what it is. And there are brick, stone, concrete and block buildings aplenty in America, for a given budget someone could certainly do a house that way instead of wood. But that budget would probably not encompass some designs.

There is also the point of materials, yeah we could build adobe homes all over the place but the price would go through the roof. Our most abundant resource is wood. Hence, wooden homes.

 

[McTurkey]

Note, I’ll get downvoted here but this is actually one of the problems we have in the US, the lack of a unified building code. Life safety and physics don’t change across a county line. (And yes, building codes are universal and can apply anywhere. You haven’t read a model code if you don’t understand that). It is a huge hidden cost driver.

It's not so much that we don't have unified building codes, it's that there are tens of thousands of authority-having jurisdictions in the US, each of which applies code differently. The National Electric Code is a very thorough standard that is revised every three years, but from state to state you'll get different requirements for which year's code must be met. And within those states, some cities or counties might have their own requirements beyond that. Like Chicago requiring all interior wiring to be in metal conduit.

So much of what you pay for when it comes to quality trade labor isn't the basic mechanics of the work (you can get 90% of that from YouTube videos), but the knowledge of the code surrounding it. I suspect even if we had nationally mandated standards, there would still be a carve-out for AHJs which want to go above and beyond for whatever reasons. But it would make it easier for everyone involved in home construction, repair, and general contracting.

 

[McTurkey]

Water damage from tire suppression can be a really big deal, so if this works at least as well as sprinklers, great. I'm not reflexively opposed to new tech, but it does need to go through extensive third-party testing first. As an aside, the risk of water damage is one of the reasons that FM200 (or Halon in the past) gas systems are common in datacenter - they add cost, complexity, and maintenance but they dramatically reduce the risk of a small fire resulting in the destruction of many millions of dollars with of equipment.

Pro-tip: combine those FM200 systems with a good anti-air defense system.

 

[cruff]

The article mentioned "inaudible" sound waves, but in the video it sounded horribly noisy and possibly ear damaging.

 

[redleader]

Whisper quiet.

This seems to be using rapid pulses of air, rather than just the infrasonic component.

The noise you hear in the video is probably intermodulation/harmonic distortion in the microphone recording the scene due to the immense low frequency energy flexing the diaphragm at frequencies it is not designed for. It probably sounds quite different in person.

 

[Wickwick]

How do universal codes deal with wildly different local "practical physics" a building is subjected to that clearly absolutely do change across a "county line"? Ie, much of the US simply does not have earthquakes, tornadoes or hurricanes or snow/ice storms or the like in the way other areas do. How does a universal code account for the needs of California on a fault vs coastal Florida vs inland Maine vs Minnesota or wherever? Or are you thinking some sort of baseline with local additions? Does it take it into account relative material abundance or skillsets? I mean, certainly I can see the value in more standards for stuff that is shared, lots of infrastructure bits of homes, egress rules and so on are indeed pretty universal. But other aspects of construction and design seem pretty inherently local.

In fact, hurricanes require different building steps than earthquakes. For the former, we are required to have straps that tie the roof to the walls so they don't lift off (they make good wings). For earthquakes, you don't want to mechanically tie the two so the structure can move without being pinned.

The US does have national codes for things like electrical wiring. It's up to the municipalities to enact those codes, but the NEC is a real thing.

 

[Wickwick]

It still has to put the fire out somehow. Infrasound is just bulk air movement, the speed of sound is around 340 m/s so at the frequency of 20 Hz the wavelength is 17 meters.

Moving the air back and forth would increase mixing between air and fuel, which can put the mixture outside the flammable range, effectively blowing out the fire. That same thing happening at the surface of a glowing ember will make it burn hotter.

How does one catch an ember? With air movement. How does one blow out a candle? With air movement.

What's important here is that the air movement is back-and-forth in an acoustic wave (vs. a jet). That's important, because at the start of reaction, you're locally depleting the oxygen that will be replaced by diffusion then (once the fire is really going) convection. The acoustic wave is just taking that local air and jiggling it. Yes, at the start there may be more oxygen brought to the flame, but it also spreads out the heat from the reaction and eventually depletes the oxygen too (by eventually, I mean a few acoustic cycles).

What you're really doing is straining the fluid near the combustion zone to extinguish the local reaction (see my post above).

 

[redleader]

It would be pretty easy to integrate a gas line shutoff with the sprinkler system. I’m constantly surprised we don’t do that by default anyway in every gas install. Likely concerns about false alarms and having to reset the gas line.

My dream home just won’t have gas.

My guess is that since most gas appliances require continuous electrical power to keep the gas valve open (why you can't use your stove when the power goes out) the additional benefit would be minor vs. just letting the sprinklers trip the breaker and cut the gas off at the appliance.

 

[gabester]

For some reason this article reminded me about the piezoelectric fanless cooling system for computers:

https://meincmagazine.com/gadgets/202...olid-state-active-cooling-in-intriguing-demo/

What’s the status of production deployment of such systems and is there any overlap? Does the infrasound from these “virtual sprinklers” work by disrupting the flame or do they create any actual cooling effect somehow?

In other words can I boost my gaming performance simply by playing the right tunes? (-;

 

[plugh]

FFS, is it important whether the sensor uses AI? I have a feeling that two decades ago, these people would have been offering a blockchain-driven sensor. Got to ride the wave.

I agree AI seems like it was thrown in for hype. But it may be the fire detection part of the system uses cameras and image recognition to detect undesirable fires, as opposed to the burners. Not exactly the AI people talk about now, but you've got to use the hot terminology.

The 3rd party analysis sounded primarily impressed with the rapid fire detection rather than the method of extinguishing. Nothing in the article or press release says anything about the fire detection since that isn't their current value proposition. Just wait for the company to pivot.

 

[SomewhereAroundBarstow]

Oh no! The kitchen is on fire and it's haunted!

 

[ca_steve]

Infrasound displacing oxygen.. Bummer for the person cooking in the kitchen. First you go unconscious from lack of oxygen, then you suffer Havana Syndrome

 

[Shavano]

Sounds cool, but after watching the video, I'm not impressed. For a fire that size, if I was in the room, I would turn the burner off and put a lid on the pan and wait until it all cooled down on it's own. If I wasn't in the room, my smoke alarm in the living room would surely go off and get my attention. I wouldn't want fire suppression (water or infrasonic) triggering at that stage of a fire.

Also, if you look at the right side of the video, you can see the drapes flapping around, which makes me wonder what the likelihood of this system tossing something else flammable into the fire, or even worse, blowing the hot oil out of the pan and making the whole thing worse.

We also can't see if the infrasound actually extinguished the fire or it burned when the fuel in the pan was exhausted.

Given how not forthright they are with their data, I suspect the latter.

 

[J Carr]

As an alternative, use Wham-O Air Blasters.

 

[Mentil]

Sadly, my 1970s patent for microprocessor-controlled condoms expired before the arrival of AI-controlled blockchain teledildonics. Maybe gifs and crypto can cause its rearousal.

Trojan-ENZ80?

 

[ArcCoyote]

As an added bonus, it hits the brown note.

 

[norton_I]

I found it a little confusing that they say this is for residential fire suppression. Who has a sprinkler system in their house? I’ve never seen a suburban house with one. They are not required by code at least in the northeast US.

Is this something super rich people have? Are sprinklers required in some areas or contexts? I guess new high rise apartments do.

All new construction in California is required to have sprinklers. Probably in other areas of the west too.

Sprinklers are required everywhere in multi family housing. It's not so much for the protection of the unit where the fire starts: by the time the sprinklers go off, that area is pretty much toast. But it slows the spread to other units, along with fire barrier walls. And it makes it easier and safer for the fire fighters.

In a single family housing, again it's not so much for the protection of the house or residents: it can help but mostly it's too late. But it slows the growth and makes it easier for the fire department to put out the fire and prevent it from spreading. In dry areas with a wildfire risk that's a big deal.

 

[TenacityOverAptitude]

My guess is that since most gas appliances require continuous electrical power to keep the gas valve open (why you can't use your stove when the power goes out) …

This is simply not true for gas stoves and cooktops. (It may be true for modern ovens.)

Older burners were ignited by pilot lights. Newer ones use a spark igniter, but don’t need electricity to continue running.

 

[jhesse]

OK? But how does that track with not trying to put it out? Like, you literally then go on to write for your anecdote:

Right, so their move was to try to stop the fire, not just flee. They did so in a poorly chosen manner sure, but I don't see how this supports the contention that typically people would just immediately abandon their house? Would they have been better or worse off or the same if some infrasound system had immediately started suppressing the flame?

He did not stop the fire.
DO NOT DO THIS is drilled over and over again for fire safety. People still try to get the fire outside. People still throw water on it. People freezing up and doing nothing. People not having either a lid or baking soda close at hand. Youtube is filled with videos of cooking fires gone wrong.

Immediate fire suppression would be much better. Don't understand what you are trying to ask there.

 

[JMTronicHobbyist]

We all know how this system really works - it's a ghost alarm that rouses all the spirits of firefighters who passed in the line of duty within the ghost-audible radius.

On a nearly related note I thought of a physically possible explanation for my ghostly photo story - temperature and humidity changes put a fog inside my camera and because it was sunny I couldn't see at the time on the screen what the camera saw. Because of the moisture the SD card failed, and maybe the first file to corrupt was the most recently accessed or the first one I wanted a closer look at, and maybe I even saw it before it corrupted and I hadn't backed it up yet, so the file on my backup was also bad, and they matched and I didn't visually confirm good files.

 

[norton_I]

TLDR; I don't understand the opposition.

It's because they are hyping it as a replacement for sprinklers where sprinklers are a requirement. They have only shown it on one specific use case where other fire suppression tools are already extremely effective. There is good reason to think it won't work well on class A fires. They have a report claiming to show it's performance but won't release it because of "proprietary and patent pending technology"?

Until they are ready to prove it's effective and not hide behind proprietary BS excuses and staged demos they should shut the fuck up

Also, they are liars. If their technology is "patent pending" that means they have field a patent application and they no longer have to withold disclosure. Either they have not yet field a parent application (which is actually a crime!) but only plan to, or they are just using that as BS reason to avoid disclosing that their product works as advertised. It's a small thing, but it's a lie and until they prove otherwise I think everyone is justified in treating the rest of their statements as untrustworthy. Not a good look for someone proposing people trust their lives to their product.

 

[SomewhereAroundBarstow]

My guess is that since most gas appliances require continuous electrical power to keep the gas valve open (why you can't use your stove when the power goes out) the additional benefit would be minor vs. just letting the sprinklers trip the breaker and cut the gas off at the appliance.

This is simply not true for gas stoves and cooktops. (It may be true for modern ovens.)

Older burners were ignited by pilot lights. Newer ones use a spark igniter, but don’t need electricity to continue running.

I'll split the difference. Most modern gas ovens have an electrically-operated thermocouple. When you turn the oven on it opens a valve on a pilot light that the igniter ignites (as igniters like to do) and that heats the thermocouple which, when it gets to an appropriate temperature to know the pilot light is working, opens the main valve and then the oven begins heating.

Most cooktops simply open the main valve and ignite the gas flow directly, because they are much less likely to put out enough gas to cause major problems like the oven can. I do think some of them have thermocouples that shut it off if they don't get sufficiently warm in a certain amount of time but I never had one that did that. I moved off of gas some years back after doing CO readings in the kitchen and not liking the numbers.

 

[NC Now]

Sound may knock down a small flame, but it does not cool hot surfaces or wet fuel.

My first thought when watching the video. (Before I read down and saw this comment in the article.)