May 29, 2009 If Ferrari made fire extinguishers it might well be knocking on Adam Scott's door. The UK designer's X Sting Wish concept sports a sleekly contoured exterior backed by some good thinking aimed at making it safe and easy to use: it's lightweight, ergonomic, color-coded, uses durable non-conductive materials and incorporates LED lights to help navigate through smoke.
Fire Extinguishers
There are over 30,000 fires attended by fire and rescue services in the workplace each year in the UK alone, with lives lost, people injured and enormous cost borne by the community. As many as 500 of these fires lead to death and injury due to direct misuse or inappropriate use of fire extinguishers, so there's a clear need to explore safer, more usable design options.
X Sting Wish
The X Sting Wish is proposed in three models - CO2, Powder and H20 – all color coded for their specific function and to aid with identification of the various functional components like grip, trigger and canister. The extinguishers are ergonomically designed, lightweight (4kg full and 2kg empty for the H20 extinguisher), have a dual trigger for more accurate and safe use (as with a chainsaw) and side LED’s to light up the area in heavy smoke or in dim lighting. The design is engineered to be structurally strong and the unit can even be used as a butt ram to knock down doors in a burning building if required. The materials are also durable and non conductive which is important in certain fire fighting conditions (e.g., to avoid heat transfer and electrical conductivity). The part carbon fiber shell also has the advantage of opening slightly under extreme heat to release pressure, which alleviates the possibility of the container exploding.
The H20 extinguisher uses a water mist technology that takes 10% of the water a conventional extinguisher. This enables the design to have a maximum carrying capacity of 2 litres of water versus the normal 20 liters with the conventional extinguisher. Another advantage to the mist technology is that it is non conductive and therefore can be used in more fire types.
Scott is searching for an investment partner to move this impressive design forward.
David Greig