SBIR Phase II: High efficiency nozzles for fire fighting

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). The broader impact of this Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is reducing wildfire-related damage in the US, reducing the risk of injury for firefighters, and improving water conservation. Wildfires are becoming major environmental threats in the US. In 2020, over 4 million acres of land were burned in the Western US, displacing tens of thousands of people and forcing millions to breathe unhealthy air. A recent study estimated that 50% of all tiny particles that are two and one half microns or less in width (PM2.5 particles) in the Western US could be attributed to wildfires. With warmer and drier seasons, in places like California, wildfires are becoming a year-round risk. Better fire suppression technologies are highly desired to counter this increasing environmental threat. Fire hose nozzles are the key instrument used by firefighters in the US; However, research improving these nozzles is lacking. The nozzles used by firefighters are centuries old designs that were not optimized for fire-suppression. The proposed Phase II project aims to optimize the nozzles to enable up to two times faster suppression. Faster suppression can prevent billions in dollars of property damage each year and save lives. The proposed technology has the potential to generate up to $50 million in revenue and 40 jobs by 2026. This SBIR Phase II Project will use the fundamentals of thermal management and computational fluid dynamic simulations to design fire-hose nozzles that can increase fire-suppression efficiency by two times while saving 50% of the water. For rapid design iteration, 3D printing techniques will be used to create nozzle prototypes for field testing and conduct the design of experiment studies. Traditional fire-fighting nozzles are classified as smooth-bore nozzles or combination nozzles. Smooth-bore nozzles create solid streams with low coverage. Combination nozzles can generate wide stream patterns but have a significantly smaller ranges in wide mode. By optimizing the flow pathways, a diverging solid stream pattern will be created. The diverging solid stream will combine the long-range and penetration of smooth-bore nozzles and wide coverage of combination nozzles in one system. In the Phase I work, fire-suppression studies showed that such water stream patterns increase suppression rates by three times for vegetation fires while using less than half the water. In the proposed Phase II work, the nozzles will be optimized for structural fires. Additionally, as part of the Phase II work, an adjustable smooth-bore nozzle will be developed. These adjustable nozzles will further increase the suppression efficiency and allow the firefighters to adapt to different fire scenarios. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.