Instant Foam for Fighting Forest Fires

Project Information

I4F

Grant agreement ID: 711160

DOI

10.3030/711160

Project closed

EC signature date 10 February 2016

Start date 1 March 2016

End date 31 May 2018

Funded under

• SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport

Total cost

€ 1 253 375,00

EU contribution

€ 877 362,50

Coordinated by

TFEX MERNOKIRODA KFT
Hungary

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - I4F (Instant Foam for Fighting Forest Fires)

Reporting period: 2017-03-01 to 2018-05-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

R-Fire is a company founded by firefighters and pilots who have used their corresponding experience to create a novel solution to fight forest fires. They have joined forces with TFEX Engineering Ltd and together developed the I4F technology and validated it with our prototype to tackle forest fire by using foam. TFEX has broad range of firefighting products and also own the Instant Foam technology.
Water is the most commonly used extinguishing material, but when it comes to forest fires there are many problems with it. Water has limited cooling capacity and a lot of water goes to waste during refilling the buckets and also during the transportation from the water resource to the fire front. Dropping water also causes problems: pilots can miss the target, distribution on surface is not homogeneous, and much of it is below or above the effectively threshold where the water is useless. There are some technical initiatives to raise the efficiency of the use of pure water for forest fires. Airplanes and some helicopters use inside tanks to reduce the waste of refilling and transportation. Short and long term retardants are also used. The long term retardants are extremely expensive but undoubtedly efficient. Foam as short term retardant also increase the efficiency of the water that is much cheaper than retardants but its efficiency and duration is usually below the long term retardant. Instant Foam for Fighting Forest Fire (I4F) technology creates homogeneous foam, ensures long lasting and it reduces the waste compared to traditional foam. The main novelty of our solution, which is built upon Instant Foam technology is that we can use our foam based extinguishing material for aerial application and ensure fast refilling.
In this project we would like to present the economic advantages of the I4F technology and the developed steps taken in order to become a market leading commercial product.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The I4F project started on the 1st of March 2016. The activities at the beginning of the project consisted of the product specification (which was completed by the end of May) and some non-technical activities. These included the preparation of a customer development plan and the preparation of the communication plan. In parallel with the preparation of these documents the actual work in the non-technical work packages have also commenced. The project website was launched as the main communication platform with the public and the consortium presented the I4F technology at a number of international and overseas conferences. The feedback at these conferences has been very positive.
Once the product specification was complete the technical development commenced. The development was carried out in an iterative manner. The development of the tank, the nozzle and the foam ran in parallel and the intermediate results were continuously tested to aid the next step in the development. Initially all the tests were done using small scale prototypes and once they were validated they were scaled up.
By the end of the first year the complete aerial unit was designed and the foam to be used has been finalised. The manufacturing of the prototypes was completed at Month 15, slightly later than expected due to problems with the manufacturing lead times. Once the aerial unit was manufactured extensive testing commenced that included stationary tests initially followed by moving tests when the aerial unit was placed on a truck. During these testing we could observe the behaviour of the aerial unit and the foam which led to some modifications and improvements. The aerial unit was finalised and installed onto an MI-8 helicopter in Month 19. In parallel with the aerial tests we have developed the ground level refilling stations.
The original plan to start the flight tests in Month 20 was hindered initially with flight permits and later with bad weather. This meant we could not test the system until spring 2018, which was when the project was supposed to finish. For this reason an amendment was requested for the project and an extension of 3 month was granted. During spring 2018 extensive validation was carried out for the I4F system with very good results (see attached images). In conclusion the technological development was a full success and the next step is to try out the system in real forest fire situations.
In parallel with the technological development, extensive communication and commercial activities took place. The I4F development was presented at the two main aerial firefighting exhibitions which were supported by a number scientific publications, conference presentations, press releases and other appearances. As a result of these we have received a lot of interest from potential customers and investors, which were followed up with face to face meetings. As a result we have created an updated business plan and commercialisation strategy to support the next step of the I4F development which is to commercialise our validated technology.
In conclusion the I4F project has been a success in terms of technological achievement based on the validation results and it was also successful from a non-technological point of view based on the interest received and number of commercial opportunities that we have created by the end of the development.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Our I4F system is more effective than traditional water or foam methods also a lot cheaper than the state of the art solutions such as the use of retardants. Furthermore, the long lasting foam structure ensures a completely new type of firefighting methodology that allows fires to be extinguished without going near the dangerous fire front. We want to save not just the forest from fires but the pilots and planes from risky direct firefighting attack.
Our foam technology ensures that larger volumes can be carried in smaller space and when deposited it stays on the branches and the trees and hence stopping the fire from spreading. As a result, using I4F will have tremendous social impact in saving human lives and nature, moreover it will:
• Increase the security feeling of the target sectors and society globally
• The eco-friendly new foam used will ensure additional environmental impact
The reduction of the cost of forest firefighting and the reduction of losses due to fires will have an additional impact on the society
Technological factors
• The maximum amount of water that can be applied for 1 square metre of area is 5kg, while using our foam technology the value is up to 15 kg, which is 3 times more than the amount of pure water.
• I4F technology able to supply foam structure with up to 60 minutes water draining half-time.
• I4F technology supplies homogenous foam structure that has an extra cooling effect with 1.7 – 2.3 times more in water equivalence; on average 2.0.
• 5kg water over 1 square metre can extinguish a fire intensity of 3,400 kw/m. Using our foam therefore has an extinguishing capacity 6 times of that, hence a fire intensity of 20,4000 kw/m can be safely put out using the foam.
• The most effective forest fire-fighting technology at present is through using retardants in a ratio of 20-25% of water. With the I4F technology, this ratio is 3%.
• The maximum structural duration of existing foams is 25 minutes, while our tests have proved that with the I4F technology we can ensure the duration of over 45 minutes.

Logo

Validation 3

Validation 1

Validation 2

Firefighter 1

Validation 4