The University Daily Kansan
Section A·Page 5
Lawrence firefighter Paul Schneider uses the department's helmets with integrated night vision to help in locating people in smoke-filled rooms and buildings. Heat intensity also can be registered visually through the helmet's viewfinder. Photo Jamie Roper/ KANSAN
Device helps rescuers save victims from fires
writer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
By Mindie Miller
When firefighters enter smoke- and flame-filled buildings to fight fires, their No. 1 goal is to get to the source of the fire as quickly as possible and find any victims who may be trapped.
But they're often limited by what they can see through dense, black smoke.
"In a fire situation, everything is black, and you can't see," said Jerry Karr, Lawrence Fire and Medical battalion chief. "It's all feeling, touching and shouting and that's how come so many people perish in them."
But since 1996, Lawrence firefighters have been using thermal imaging units to see through the smoke.
The first imager was donated to the department by a private citizen, but firefighters found the imagers so helpful that in 1999, the department invested in three new imagers, called FireFLIRs, that use updated technology.
FireFLIR is a self-contained viewing apparatus that uses infrared technology to allow firefighters to see and distinguish objects at different temperatures, even through dense smoke. It is manufactured by FLIR Systems, a company based in Portland, Ore.
The FLIR units can be hand-held or mounted on a helmet, leaving firefighters' hands free to carry people from burning buildings or handle equipment.
Bill Stark, battalion chief, said the Lawrence department had not yet used the equipment to make a live rescue.
"What we're using it for right now is to help us speed up the search process." he said.
Karr said speed was crucial in saving lives because the toxic gases emitted by fires made victims sleepy.
"A lot of times, we'll find fatalities within three to four yards of a door or window," he said.
The world through the lens of a FLIR unit is composed of black, white and shades of gray. Although all objects radiate a certain amount of heat, the FireFLIR differentiates between objects of different temperatures. Cool objects tend toward dark gray through the unit, while hot objects approach pure white.
Captain Joe Hoelscher said people were easy to spot through the FireFLIR because they showed up white through the unit and because they had a distinctive shape.
"Nothing else in a house looks like a human form," he said.
Hoelscher said the FireFLIRs kept firefighters safer, too.
Other than heart attacks and getting lost, losing air supply and getting asphyxiated are the leading causes of firefighters' deaths. The units allow firefighters to get in and out more quickly, he said.
The department received approval from the city commission last night to buy one additional FireFLIR with money from its 2000 budget. Each unit costs $15,950.
Adding the fifth unit would mean that the department would have one unit on each of its five front-line fire engines.
Jim McSwain, fire chief, said Lawrence firefighters had responded positively to the new technology.
"Fortunately, we haven't had an opportunity to use it on a search for a victim," he said. "But with the feedback we're getting, it's going to be very useful if we're trying to find someone in a smoke-filled building."
Student club to launch rocket in New Mexico
Bv Mike Hoffman
writer@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Blast off — students in the KU Rocket System Development Organization are working on a rocket engine that would use liquid oxygen and JP8, the fuel used for military lets.
The group has been working on the engine for two years.
Rob Morehead, Tulsa, Okla. senior, said the group planned on placing the engine in a rocket vehicle about 35 feet long and 16
inches in diameter and launching it at the White Sands Missile Base in New Mexico in either May or June. For safety reasons, it is illegal to launch rockets in Kansas.
The club is funded by the aerospace engineering department, the Kansas University Endowment Association and the NASA space grant consortium. The project costs between $14,000 and $16,000, said Enrique Cordero, Chihuahua, Mexico, senior and group member.
The group plans on testing the motor next week in order to measure thrust and chamber pressure and check whether the
engine works according to expectations.
Besides building the rocket engine, the engineering organization is conducting research on the benefits of using denser liquid oxygen as a fuel for such rocket engines.
Cordero said the research had shown that denser liquid oxygen made the rocket vehicle lighter, which equaled better performance.
"NASA is real interested in the results of our research." Cordero said.
He said the club was student-supported "We take what we learn in class and
directly apply it," Cordero said. "We also learn communication, leadership and budgeting skills."
kay Taghavi, associate professor of aerospace engineering, said he was proud of the work that the group had done.
"It's about as close as they can actually get to a real operation outside of the University," he said.
Taghavi also said working on rockets required teamwork and responsibility.
"It's amazing that the students are able to undertake such a huge project like this with their busy schedules," he said.
KU scientists help to increase oil production within state
Special to the Kansan
Bv Jennifer Knopp
With oil prices on the rise, a team of KU geologists and engineers is helping Kansas oil producers to fish more oil out of their existing wells.
The researchers are experimenting just outside of Russell with a more efficient oil-recovery method called carbon-dioxide flooding.
Carbon-dioxide flooding is part of the Tertiary Oil Recovery Project. The project was established by the KU Geological Survey in 1974 to acquaint local oil producers with the technical and economic potential of tertiary or enhanced oil recovery.
Alan Byrnes, co-director of the
project and research scientist at the geological survey, said this method had the potential to increase oil production in the state.
"Every oil-producing state reach es a point in oil production where it peaks and then declines," he said.
He said that conventional recovery techniques were capable of removing only a small portion of the oil in reservoirs.
Byrnes said carbon-dioxide flooding was a method used only for mature oil wells that already had been through the first two stages of oil recovery.
pumped naturally to the surface by natural gas. After this supply of natural force is exhausted, water is injected into the oil reservoir and it displaces the oil from its pores in the second stage of oil recovery.
Byrnes said that after the second stage, two-thirds of the oil still was left in the well. Carbon dioxide is injected into these wells, reducing the oil's resistance to flow and pushing it to the surface.
During the first stage of the process, oil, which is found in the small spaces or pores that exist between solid particles that form rocks, is
Paul Willhite, co-director of the Tertiary Oil Project and professor of chemical engineering, said the problem with Kansas was that it had no natural carbon-dioxide resource. The only way to provide carbon dioxide is to construct a pipeline running from the Oklahoma
Panhandle to Central Kansas.
Willhite said his team of engineers, who were designing the equipment for the project, had to prove that the method worked to attract investors to finance the pipeline.
Willhite said that the project, which is in its first stage, would cost $5.4 million and is cost-shared between the KU Geological Survey, the U.S. Department of Energy and Murfin Energy Company, which will provide the land and oil.
"Our lab tests show that the process will work." Willhite said.
Tim Carr, research scientist at the geological survey, said Kansas was such a high per-capita energy user as an agricultural state that this
method would reduce the cost of oil for farming equipment.
"Oil and gas is a $2.5 billion industry here." Carr said.
Carr said the time also was ripe for testing new technology because international oil prices were so high.
"Right now there is a shortage of oil in the world, and more oil is being consumed than produced," he said. "That's why prices go up. People are looking to invest in finding oil."
Carr said he thought that carbon dioxide flooding would only indirectly affect gas prices in Kansas.
"Unless you try new things all of the time, prices will keep rising," he said.
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