Quenching of Flame By Sound

Electrical Engineering

The fire extinguishing techniques used nowadays are having various drawbacks. The need for new fire extinguishing techniques is very important as fire accidents causes damages. Sound wave could be one of the alternative in extinguishing flames. The acoustic pressure and air velocity produced from a speaker is the fundamental concept used to explain how sound waves put off flames. This paper aims to study and analyze the effect of different frequencies of sound wave on flames and also to study the behavior of acoustic wave propagation in the collimator and surrounding environment. Experiments were then conducted to find the range of frequencies within which fire extinguishes. Three different sources of flames were used with three different state of fuel (solid, liquid and gas). The converged collimator used to increase the air velocity output as compared to an ordinary collimator design. The variation of high and low pressure which is then coupled with high flow air velocity, causes disturbances in air-fuel ratio at the flame boundary, is one of the prime reason leading to flame extinction. In experiment, the frequency range needed suppress the flames was found to be, between 30 to 95 Hz. However, in experiments the flame boundary used was relatively thinner than that of actual fire accident . This experiment focus on extinguishing fires at primary stages.

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