Flame Management with Electricity





We have known this for 200 yearsand it looks like a first pass is producing useful knowledge and ideas.  One wonders what took so long.

Yet this should be thrown open tohigh school science fairs in which everyone attempts to find novel ways tomanage an open flame.  It really needs tobe played with to get a sense of possibility established.

The relationship with soot isintriguing and suggestive.

And yes, we suddenly have a wayto directly shape and manage combustion fronts in places like engines.  That may be optimistic, but it is a newavenue for research.

Fires could be extinguished using beams of electricity

13:43 March 28, 2011



Scientists have developed a device that uses beams of electricity toextinguish flames
(Photo: Sylvain Pedneault)


It's certainly an established fact that electricity can cause fires,but today a group of Harvard scientists presented their research on the use ofelectricity for fighting fires. In a presentation at the 241stNational Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society, Dr.Ludovico Cademartiri told of how they used a unique device to shoot beams ofelectricity 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 theamount of water that needed to be sprayed into burning buildings, both saving waterand limiting water damage to those buildings.

Apparently, it has been known for over 200 years that electricityaffects fire – it can cause flames to change in character, or even stop burningaltogether. According to Cademartiri, a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. George M. Whitesidesat Harvard University, what hasn't been looked into much is the sciencebehind the relationship. It turns out that soot particles within flames caneasily become charged, and therefore can cause flames to lose stability whenthe local electrical fields are altered.

The Harvard device consists of a 600-watt amplifier hooked up to awand-like probe, which is what delivers the electrical beams. The researchersbelieve that a much lower-powered amplifier should deliver similar results,which could allow the system to worn as a backpack, by firefighters. It couldalso be mounted on ceilings, like current sprinkler systems, or beremotely-controlled.

Cademartiri believes the technology would work best for fires inconfined spaces, such as aboard submarines, but not so much for wide-open areaslike forests. As it was additionally found that electrical waves can affect theheat and distribution of flames, he also thinks their discovery could be usedto boost the efficiency of devices that involve controlled combustion, such asengines, power plants, and cutting and welding torches.

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