In a makeshift demonstration kitchen in Concord, California, cooking oil splatters in and around a frying pan, which catches fire on an unattended gas stove. Within moments, a smoke detector wails. But in this demonstration, something less common happens: An AI-driven sensor activates and wall emitters blast infrasound waves toward the source of the fire in an attempt to put it out.
The science of acoustic fire suppression, which has long been known and documented in scientific literature and the press, works by vibrating oxygen molecules away from a fuel source, depriving the fire of a critical component needed for combustion. Indeed, after just a few seconds of infrasound, the tiny kitchen blaze goes out.
The demonstration I witnessed took place in the presence of numerous firefighters and officials from Contra Costa County Fire Protection District, the state’s premier wildland firefighting agency (CAL FIRE), and invited journalists.
“We were able to not just point-and-shoot like a fire extinguisher; we figured out how to run it through ducting and distribute it like a sprinkler system,” said Geoff Bruder, co-founder and CEO of Sonic Fire Tech, during the presentation.
The company’s goal is to replace sprinklers, which are effective at stopping fires but can also do significant water damage to a property. Sonic Fire Tech appears to be the first company trying to commercialize the science of acoustic fire suppression. Its executives have already been touring Southern California; Wednesday’s event was the first in the northern half of the state.
The company aims to make this infrasound technique mainstream in both commercial (for instance, a data center, where sprinklers would damage electronics) and in-home installations, given that sprinklers are already required in all new California homes built in 2011 and later.
Sonic Fire Tech also hopes to produce a backpack-based system that could be worn by wildland firefighters headed out into the field.
“We are making meaningful technological improvements on a monthly basis,” Stefan Pollack, a company spokesperson, emailed Ars after the event.
But two experts who spoke with Ars raised serious questions about the potential for this technology to supplant traditional sprinklers in a home. They are even more skeptical as to whether the technique can be effective in an uncontrolled wildfire situation, where flames can grow very quickly.
Sprinkler replacement?
Sonic Fire Tech says that its system is as good as, if not better than, traditional sprinklers for many applications.
“Sonic Fire Tech is in fact intended to replace interior residential sprinklers,” Pollack told Ars. “The demo showed a critical benefit of SFT over water sprinklers in suppressing a kitchen fire, which represents about half of all residential fires. This is also applicable to commercial kitchen fires and other common grease and chemical fire applications.”
The company’s press releases tout infrasound’s advantages over sprinklers. “Traditional residential sprinklers activate several minutes only after heat rises to a threshold, can discharge large volumes of water that damage interiors and electronics, and require plumbing infrastructure that adds cost and complexity,” says one release. “Sonic Home Defense, by contrast, deploys in milliseconds and uses inaudible low-frequency infrasound waves to disrupt the chemistry of combustion before flames can spread, with no water, no chemicals, and no risk of flooding the interior of the home being protected.”
The goals sound great, but they do raise questions among outside observers.
“Sprinklers have a well-established role,” Nate Wittasek, a Los Angeles-based fire protection engineer, emailed Ars. “They apply water directly to the fuel, cool the space, slow or stop flashover, and give people time to get out while reducing risk to firefighters. Sound may knock down a small flame, but it does not cool hot surfaces or wet fuel. That raises real questions about re-ignition, smoldering fires, hidden fires, and fires that are partially blocked by contents.”
Water sprinklers have been around for a long time. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), a well-known industry nonprofit, was founded in the late 1800s to develop a uniform standard for sprinklers. The latest iteration of those guidelines, known as the “13D” standard, is well documented and widely adopted.
A recent press release from Sonic Fire Tech states that the company has “secured third-party validation of its system as a viable NFPA 13D-equivalent alternative to conventional residential sprinklers.”
The company told its attendees that it has been evaluated by James Andy Lynch (who was present at the demonstration) and his team at Fire Solutions Group, a Pennsylvania-based consultancy, to establish Sonic Fire Tech’s bona fides.
Sonic Fire Tech declined to provide a full copy of Lynch’s report, citing “confidential and patent-pending information,” but it did send a two-page executive summary.
This document states that “the Sonic Fire Tech system is capable of delivering extremely rapid fire detection, meaningful suppression or extinguishment, and consistent performance across a variety of installation configurations.”
But the summary lacks any kind of detailed explanation of which tests were run and under what conditions. It also concludes that “additional testing and optimization are recommended to further expand the range of validated applications,” adding that Sonic Fire Tech’s products have the “potential to complement or, in certain applications, serve as an alternative to traditional suppression systems.”
“Equivalency [to the 13D standard] can only be approved by the appropriate authority having jurisdiction and requires technical documentation be submitted demonstrating the equivalency,” Jonathan Hart, NFPA Technical Lead, Fire Protection Technical Resources, emailed.
To date, Sonic Fire Tech has not publicly provided this information.
Wittasek said that if Sonic Fire Tech is going to claim that its product is as good as or better than the NFPA 13D standard, it should be able to provide a whole range of specifics, such as “who validated it, what test protocols were used, what fire scenarios were included, and how success was defined.”
“I would want to see full-scale testing that includes typical residential fires like furniture and mattress fires, cooking fires, electrical fires, and attic or exterior ember exposures,” he added. “It should also cover different conditions like open and closed doors, varying ceiling heights, crosswinds, obstructed fuel packages, and whether the fire comes back after the system shuts off.”
Similarly, Michael Gollner, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert in fire dynamics, told there’s simply not enough information yet to show that this technology works better than sprinklers.
He pointed to a 2018 academic paper, which found that “acoustics alone are insufficient to control flames beyond the incipient stage.”
By contrast, “Fire sprinklers are extensively tested and certified by standards developed by the fire safety community over many years,” he emailed. “I think this product needs to demonstrate the same or better performance with the same reliability before it can be considered to replace any existing safety measure. While I am absolutely supportive of out-of-the-box thinking, lives are truly at stake, and new technologies must carefully demonstrate effectiveness and reliability before being entrusted by society.”
Comparison with traditional fire suppression
The history of fire suppression dates back to ancient Rome, where bucket brigades were common. The first patent for a sprinkler system was granted in 1872 to Philip W. Pratt of Massachusetts. Since then, sprinklers have evolved into a highly reliable technology, with failure rates below 0.1% in structure fires. They are credited with reducing property damage by up to 70% and firefighter deaths by more than half.
In contrast, acoustic fire suppression remains a niche research topic. Studies have shown that sound waves can extinguish flames by disrupting the combustion process, but most experiments have been conducted in controlled laboratory settings with small flames. The 2018 paper cited by Gollner, published in the journal Fire Safety Journal, tested a range of frequencies and amplitudes, concluding that while sound can suppress flames up to a certain size, it is ineffective against larger, fully developed fires.
Additionally, the presence of obstacles, such as furniture or kitchen counters, can block the acoustic waves, creating shadow zones where the fire can continue to burn. This is a fundamental limitation that water sprinklers do not face, as water can flow around obstacles and cool surfaces indirectly.
Sonic Fire Tech’s system uses infrasound (below 20 Hz) based on the principle that low frequencies can travel longer distances and penetrate obstacles more effectively than higher frequencies. However, the physics of sound attenuation mean that even infrasound loses energy over distance, especially in non-straight paths. The company’s solution involves placing emitters in the ductwork of buildings, allowing the sound to be distributed much like conditioned air. In the demonstration, the fire was located in a kitchen with the detector and emitter positioned on a wall about 10 feet away. The fire was small and contained in a pan—ideal conditions.
Potential applications and limitations
Beyond residential settings, Sonic Fire Tech is exploring commercial uses, particularly in data centers where water damage can be catastrophic. A single sprinkler activation can ruin millions of dollars worth of servers. In such environments, an acoustic system that can extinguish electrical fires without harming electronics is highly attractive. However, data center fires often involve smoldering cables or lithium-ion batteries, which may not respond to sound alone.
Another proposed application is on bulldozers for wildland firefighting. The idea is to equip dozers with infrasound emitters to protect the vehicle from radiant heat and small flames. During the demonstration, Contra Costa County Deputy Fire Chief Tracie Dutter expressed openness to testing the system on a dozer, but noted that firefighters want to understand long-term maintenance requirements, routine calibration needs, and how system failures would be communicated to the owner.
For wildland fires, the challenges are immense. The flames can be hundreds of feet high, with intense heat and wind. An infrasound system would need to generate immense power to affect such fires, and the portability of a backpack unit would be limited by battery life and weight. Moreover, the chaotic nature of wildland fires—with shifting winds, embers, and spot fires—makes targeted suppression extremely difficult.
It is also worth noting that infrasound is inaudible to humans, but high sound pressure levels can still cause physical effects, such as vibrations in the body or, at extreme levels, lung damage. The company has not disclosed the decibel levels of its emitters, but given that they are designed to operate in occupied spaces, they must comply with occupational safety limits. The usual threshold for infrasound exposure is around 120 dB for short durations, but prolonged exposure could be harmful.
Industry perspective and regulatory hurdles
The NFPA has not endorsed Sonic Fire Tech’s system as a 13D equivalent. The authority having jurisdiction—typically local building departments or fire marshals—must approve any alternative. Without publicly available test data, it is unlikely that any jurisdiction will approve it as a direct replacement. The company is likely several years away from obtaining necessary certifications.
Meanwhile, competitors are also researching acoustic suppression, but none have brought a product to market. For example, engineers at the University of West Georgia demonstrated a portable extinguisher using sound, but it was limited to very small fires. The U.S. Army Research Laboratory has explored acoustic extinguishers for vehicle fires, but not for building-wide suppression.
Sonic Fire Tech’s CEO Geoff Bruder has a background in audio technology, having previously founded a company that makes high-end speakers. This expertise has been applied to designing efficient infrasound emitters. The company has raised some venture capital, but the amount has not been disclosed.
During the Q&A session after the demonstration, a firefighter asked about the system’s response to a grease fire that had spread to the ceiling. Bruder admitted that the current prototype is designed for fires in the incipient stage—before they spread. He acknowledged that if the fire grows beyond a pan-sized flame, the infrasound may not be sufficient.
This is a crucial point. Statistics from the U.S. Fire Administration show that cooking fires account for roughly 50% of residential fires, but only 10% of fire deaths, because they are often caught early. However, those that spread cause significant damage. A functioning smoke detector and a quick response by an occupant can prevent escalation. The Sonic Fire Tech system adds an automatic response, but it may not be faster than a human who is present—and many cooking fires occur when the cook is distracted or not home.
The system also requires a detector that can differentiate between a small flame and normal cooking. The company uses a multi-sensor approach, including optical flame sensors and thermal cameras, to reduce false alarms. However, false alarms will inevitably occur, and the system will activate, blasting infrasound for several seconds. This could be startling for occupants, though the sound is inaudible.
Conclusion
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Ultimately, Sonic Fire Tech has demonstrated an intriguing concept that works under ideal conditions. But the path to replacing sprinklers is long, requiring rigorous testing, peer-reviewed studies, and regulatory approval. For now, the technology remains a promising experiment rather than a proven safety solution. The fire service community will be watching closely, but as experts have emphasized, lives are at stake and caution is warranted.
Source: Ars Technica News