Future Firefighters Could Fight Fire With Blasts of Flame-Bending Electricity

Am I right in guessing that the beam travels first through humidity in air? How do you make sure it goes where you want if you are at a certain distance from the flame and not bend back on you lol..

it goes where you want it to because it travels straight, that or i'm guessing it acts a lot like corona in that it makes a field type deal.

it wouldn't turn around and hit you because it doesn't work that way, it's not an arc, it's a beam, kinda like radio waves. have some faith in your fellow man not to be an idiot while reporting.

This is a very interesting story and the technology has some interesting possibilities. I am an architect and a volunteer firefighter, so fire behavior and life-safety systems are pretty important to me no matter which hat/helmet I am wearing.
I would however point out that the closing remark of the story, "...saving entire buildings from getting drenched when a fire breaks out in one small corner." isn't quite right, except in Hollywood movies. Typical fire sprinkler systems will release the fire suppression water at a single sprinkler head when the fusible link in the head is melted by very hot gases or flame. The bigger and hotter the fire, the more heads might release. They don't all go off when one does, and certainly not all letting loose upon smoke alarm activation.
Sprinklers save buildings and delay the development of combustion which can extend safe egress time for occupants. The fascinating technology in this article probably has more potential value in critical rescue situations than for property preservation.

Is anyone thinking what I'm thinking...? PROTON PACKS!! Hopefully they have a working prototype of this by the time the next Ghostbusters movie comes out.

What Is Science but A Continual Lesson of The Challenge To Studying The Entire Known Existence of Everything.

-Truth-

Very cool article but this tech seems like it would be pretty expensive for the out in the country fire departments. I am a Firefighter out in one of those not so well funded departments. petefolio hit on all the points I was going to address.

definitely cool!

I wonder what the electronic device implications would be of a potential "sprinkler" system using this tech.

It's cool that my computer wouldn't get soaked in water... but not much better if it gets fried by an EMP...

I don't think the cost will be too excessive. I mean I don't know how complex the wand is, but if it's basically a wand and a stereo amp how expensive can they BS it to be?

Don't cross the streams.....

I would actually think the most expensive part of this would be the battery. If they get it down to 1/10 the power that is 60 watts of portable power. Now it would depend on how long you want the run time to be if you need 1/2 hour then currently the battery would be about $150.

As of "complex" I think that has to do with figuring out how to generate the right waves and such, not on how complex the final device will be. I would think that once the method is figured out, reproducing it would be fairly simple.

Am I missing out on something? If the "electric hose" could put out the flames, does it mean that it also stops the combustion reaction? If the combustion reaction still occurs, then smoke will still be produced and the object combusting will still be hot. At least we got the flames down though. (Y)

Pretty interesting to see others making progress, at the time my colleague and I were investigating, I thought it would take more power. I agree with the above statement, even though you interrupt the combustion process, you would need to continue until the material is cooled below its combustion temperature. Another technology new to the market which offers great cooling and lowers the o2 level to interrupt combustion is known a Hybrid Suppression system. Atomized water via shockwaves and shearing produces water droplets less than 5 microns at 25 psi. Water flows are as low as .26 gpm to extinguish wood crib and flammable liquid fires but most challenging is a candle in a server cabinet (and yes with running servers) Take a look a Victaulic Vortex,

Great story!

What will the Fire Brigade unions say about this technology?

What circumstances can you use the electrical beam? I am guessing you have no control of the distance of which it travels, the risk of someone of the public being injured i believe is high.

There needs to be some way in which the beam is grounded.