+ - Fighting fires with beams of electricity-> 2
Submitted
by
cylonlover
cylonlover writes "It's certainly an established fact that electricity can cause fires, but a group of Harvard scientists have presented their research on the use of electricity for fighting fires. In a presentation at the 241st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, Dr. Ludovico Cademartiri told of how they used a unique device to shoot beams of electricity at an open flame over one foot tall. Almost immediately, he said, the flame was extinguished. On a larger scale, such a system would minimize the amount of water that needed to be sprayed into burning buildings, both saving water and limiting water damage to those buildings."
Link to Original Source
Link to Original Source
Two Things (Score:1)
1) What ever you do, don't cross the streams.
2) Is it a good idea to be shooting electricity and water onto a fire at the same time? That's not going to end well for someone.
Re: (Score:2)
Both excellent points!
Back in tech school, the chemical engineering types had a great demo of a blowtorch tweeter (hifi speaker). They seeded the flame with sodium, I think, and stuck a couple of electrodes into the resulting charged ion envelope, spaced about 15 cm apart.
The electrodes were driven by a high voltage supply modulated with an audio signal.
Absolutely terrific high end but the background hiss was terrible.