First off! A gigantic, heart felt warm welcome to the 4 new subscribers that have joined us this week. You’re in the company of many others who are receiving high-frequency curiosity-inducing content every single week.
Today at a Glance:
How Fires Spread
Why Current Solutions Fail
New Technologies + Applications
How Fires Spread:
Let me tell you about 2021. Two words: Heat. Dome. This year was crazy in so many ways, but living in British Columbia we were hit with the highest temperatures in recorded history – 49.6C; for American readers, that’s 121.28F.
What came with that? You guessed it. Forest fires… Massive forest fires. We’re not the only ones though. Australia, Indonesia, Brazil, California and more have millions of hectares burned, displacing both people and wildlife.
Some fires start with lightning strikes, others are man made – campfires, cigarettes… Actually, this diagram shows it better than I can explain it.
Fires need 3 things. Fuel (trees, shrubs, dried grass), Oxygen and Heat. This is called the Fire Triangle – take away one of these and you can suppress a fire.
How fires spread also depend on 3 factors: Fuel, Weather and Topography.
Everything has a Flash Point – the temperature at which it will burst into flames. Woods flash point is 300C. At this temperature, it will release hydrocarbons gases which mixes with oxygen, combust and create fire.
Weather plays a major role in the birth, growth and death of a wildfire. Droughts and heat waves lead to extremely favourable conditions. Temperature, wind and moisture are the ingredients affecting how wildfires spread, the combination of which are called Coupled Fire Atmosphere Dynamics.
Lastly Topography. Fires like climbing slopes, so wildfires can move up mountains quickly, aided by warm air moving upwards. The opposite is usually true for moving down slopes.
Alright, you know enough about wildfires to pass a Grade 5 quiz. Moving on!
Why Current Solutions Fail:
Human component: There are usually two teams of people fighting fires on the ground – hotshots (group of 20 fire fighters building a firebreak to strip the land of fuel) and smoke jumpers (paratroopers that jump out of helicopters to battle small fires in remote areas using the same techniques as hotshots)
The problem is there are only a few hundred hotshots and smoke jumpers, even fewer pilots
Carrying Capacity: Between helicopters and air tankers, the average payload capacity comes in at around 2000 gallons or 7500 liters.
Time to delivery: Without a reservoir close to the fire, delivery times increase
Night flight: Most helicopters/planes won’t do night bombings due to low visibility
Maneuverability + area of impact: Look again at the picture of the helicopter. All drops are straight lines which target fire borders but the drop surface isn’t large enough
Cost: The average annual cost to fight forest fires are $1B in Canada alone
New Technologies + Applications:
When analyzing the problem, there are a few levers I saw, that when pulled will have a material impact on controlling wildfires.
Increase carrying capacity
Sustained fixed position flight
Autonomous
Targeted delivery
It’s a little ironic I should use the term “new technology” when it’s really just innovation on top of dirigibles… Oh well.
The image above is a rendering of an Aeroscraft Dragon Dream with a carrying capacity of 250 tons. This is a 93X increase over current solutions. Capable of VTOL, a top speed of 60 mph, and a flight ceiling of 12,000 ft – factors 1,2,3 check!
Alright so this craft can carry a ton (no pun intended) more supplies, but you’re probably thinking “Nick! Won’t it just drop it in a straight line?! What’s the difference?”
Ah ha! Don’t worry that pretty head of yours, Nick thought of that too. Solving problem 4 – targeted delivery involves… Drones!
Using the aforementioned coupled fire atmosphere dynamics for modelling, algorithms can be programmed into the drones to create the most effective flight formations – it’d look something like this.
… Yeah, I agree, it’s a little freaky looking (you think it’s a flock of birds, but it’s really a swarm of drones… Black Mirror anyone?)
Two types of drones are carried onboard:
Proactive
Reactive
A proactive drone does the job of the human hotshots by dropping explosive devices that break up the ground, creating a perimeter around the fire.
The reactive drones carry out the job of the air tankers by carrying and dropping one of these cute looking things.
Because the craft will be hovering in fixed flight, the roof can be fitted with landing pads where helicopters can drop additional fire extinguisher balls that can then be automatically loaded back into the holding racks – much like how your luggage is automatically loaded onto planes.
Voila! You have a solution with a 93X increase in carrying capacity, capable of fighting fires day and night.
One More Thing:
I learned through part of my research about a thing called Cloud Seeding – using chemicals in a way to produce ice crystals in higher temperature clouds therefore creating artificial rain… Imagine the air ship forming clouds above wildfires - creating the most efficient forest fire suppressant there is… Rain.
Here’s an animated short that’s well… Awesome.
That does it for Episode 001. Thank you so much for being a part of FarPoint.
Until next time, stay curious my friends!