Aerial wild firefighting : Suppression of water loss and Enhancement of crew safety

Name of the provider (company name or main contact name), or FIRE IN ID ? R-SUP, Lyon-France Contact: Bertrand LUN

CCC addressed

Scope, rationale, context: general description. Precise here if this technology is currently use (eg. company name or contact info) Presently the widely in use and efficient protocol in aerial wild firefighting is the water drop according to the cascade like procedure. This protocol requires a low altitude drop (100-120ft) in order to minimize the in-flight water loss by evaporation. This in-flight water loss is proportionnal to the plane speed and altitude and could be as high as 40% !!! As it is mandatory to perform a low altitude drop, it is not possible to operate aerial firefighting by night. Wildfires are more and more frequent and intense, then it becomes mandatory to involve safer and less water loss procedures. The goals of our proposed innovation is to avoid such water waste and to enhance crew safety.

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Short description of the solution. Technical details if relevant. Keywords.

Our proposed solution is to drop water bags. The principle is to wrap water with a specific envelop ; this envelop is built from an innovative membrane ( strong enough during the filling, loading and dropping processes but relativeley weak to predictibly burst and optimally spray when hitting the gournd). Our technology allows a wide range of bag size, from 10 liters to few cubic meters.
This innovation enable :
1. Total suppression of in-flight water loss.
2. Better targetting the focused zone.
3. Higher safety for the plane and crew.
4. Possibilty to process drop by night
5. Suitable for any military transport airplanes ; no need of specific planes.
6. Better pooling of aerial wild firefighting capacities in EU

TRL of the proposed solution - Innovation stage (if applicable) 5-6: Technology Developement & Demonstration

Expected/scheduled future developments

Schedule of future developments
Our innovation was preliminary tested in laboratory by the Ceren-Fr and the results support the Proof of Concept of the protocol.
We are presently looking for parteners and official supports to organize real situation evaluation aiming to move from the Proof of Concept step to the Routine uses in futur wild firefighting operations.
This solution should be considered as an realistic option to enable to increase quickly additionnal capacities of aerial wild firefighting without investing in additionnal new amphibous planes.

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This project requires the cooperation of the Army and Govment support.