Using sound waves to put out fires

Forget water: An American company has found a way to fight fires with sound waves. The technology could extinguish a blaze without drenching your home or business.

Each year, there are around 330,000 home fires in the US, resulting in 2,600 civilian deaths. While the number of home fires has halved since 1980, fire fighters today are facing new challenges.

Modern homes experience more grease-related fires, with more people cooking with oil than in the past. Lithium-ion batteries are becoming increasingly common — which the US Department of Commerce says have caused more than 200,000 fires since 2011

Now, Sonic Fire Tech has developed a technology it says can extinguish fires without drawing on strained municipal water supplies or causing water damage — using low-frequency sound waves.

Acoustic suppression

The company has developed an acoustic generator that can be housed inside a building, and produces high-pressure infrasound waves. These travel through a dedicated ducting system, much like plumbing or HVAC. Sonic Fire Tech says the sound waves vibrate oxygen molecules and push them away faster than the fuel can use them. Since fire needs oxygen to sustain itself, without it, the flames starve.

“We want to fight fires without the inconveniences of conventional suppression,” co-founder and CEO of Sonic Fire Tech Geoff Bruder said. “A traditional sprinkler triggers when it senses heat between 135 and 165 degrees Fahrenheit, which takes at least three minutes of burning fire. And then, it unleashes 8 to 24 gallons of water per minute into the room it’s installed in.”

Sonic Fire Tech’s system activates the moment it detects heat. Because sound waves cause no damage to the building, there’s no reason to wait; if it’s a false alarm, there’s no harm done. The sound waves are below the audible range of 20 Hz, so humans and pets can’t hear them.

“What makes our system especially promising is that it can suppress grease fires — something water-based systems can’t do,” Bruder said. The estimated installation cost for a 3,500 square feet home is $30,000 or around $8.50 per square foot.

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has previously studied the idea of using sound to suppress fires, and a decade ago students at George Mason University found a way to miniaturize the technology.

But Bruder says his background helped take it to the next level. “I’m an aerospace engineer. I started my career at NASA, working on power systems for planetary missions,” he said. There, he converted “heat energy into acoustic waves, then into power and cooling for a lander designed to survive on Venus.” That expertise was what lawyer Michael Thomas, the company’s co-founder and board chairman, was looking for to develop the technology, which he had been studying “as a side-project” since the 2000s.

In 2019, after connecting on LinkedIn, the two founded Sonic Fire Tech, working “nights and weekends” around their full-time jobs on an early prototype. In 2025, they raised $3.5 million in funding, before a $15 million round in August 2026, led by the O.H.I.O. Fund.

Beyond interior suppression, Sonic Fire Tech wants to eventually use sound waves to fight wildfires. In recent years, the US, and particularly California, has experienced devastating fires that have become easier to ignite and harder to contain as the result of a worsening climate crisis. The company hopes to alleviate the strain on water supplies without contributing to the environmental pollution associated with chemical retardants, which are often laden with toxic metals.