fairfolio
Saved Projects

Alginate: The Nontoxic, Biodegradable Tool for the Firefighting Arsenal

CSEF · 2010 Earth & Environment (Senior Division Only) Third Award

Judy J. Li · Canyon Crest Academy, San Diego, San Diego County

Overview

Objectives/Goals The ingredients of many common fire retardants and suppressants have both immediate and long-term negative effects on ecological communities. Common active ingredients include toxic chemicals that bio-magnify in food chains or nitrates and phosphates that can cause eutrophication in nearby water sources. The purpose of this project is to determine if a viscous spray made with alginate, a natural, biodegradable compound produced in the cell walls of brown algae, is an effective fire-retardant alternative based on its ability to prevent combustion and burning. Methods/Materials Each trial tested three 3.0g hay pellets with varying levels of alginate exposure [a dry, unsprayed hay pellet (control, pellet A), a hay pellet sprayed 5 times with 0.5% alginate (pellet B), and a hay pellet sprayed 5 times with water (second control, pellet C)]. Each hay pellet was exposed to a Bunsen burner flame at a distance of 5cm from the side of the pellet to the tip of the Bunsen burner, for 15 seconds. Then, pellets B and C were allowed to dry, and all the pellets were weighed to determine the percent mass left after burning. Forty-seven trials were conducted, each involving three pellets, for a total of 141 tested pellets. Results Pellet A, the control, burned the most, with a mean of 45.9% mass burned. Pellet B, the alginate pellet, burned the least, with a mean of 16.0% mass burned. Pellet C, the water pellet, burned more than pellet B but less than pellet A, with a mean of 32.5% mass burned. Conclusions/Discussion The gel-like properties of viscous alginate solution prevented burning and combustion consistently better than water. The standard deviation of the mass of burned pellet B was 0.185 while the standard deviation of mass of burned pellet C was 0.355 and for Pellet A was 0.507. This implied that hay pellets sprayed with alginate were much less flammable than those sprayed with an equal volume of water. This finding is significant based on the z test, which suggested an extremely low p-value of <0.00003. These results indicate that alginate could possibly be used as an alternative, more environmentally friendly fire retardant. More studies are necessary to further explore the fire suppressant/extinguisher potential of alginate.

Summary statement

This project tested the novel idea of using alginate - a natural chemical produced in brown algae - as a nontoxic fire retardant and results suggest that a coating of alginate solution reduces flammability more than a coating of water.

Help received

Used lab equipment at Canyon Crest Academy and used fire under the supervision of Ms. Slijk; Funding from an Intel Research Grant awarded by COSMOS

Awards (1)

Competition history

  • CSEF 2010 Earth & Environment (Senior Division Only) · Entry S0823

Resources

Related projects

Closest projects by meaning, across every fair and year in the corpus.

Browse more like this

Source: California Science & Engineering Fair public projects

Save projects to your library

Sign in with Google to keep track of projects you find interesting, organized into folders. An account also raises your daily allowance for “Has this been done?”, and lets you create a key for the MCP server with a much higher limit than anonymous use. Browsing stays public.

Continue with Google