Automist sprinkler system wins James Dyson Award

9 September 2009

An innovative, low-cost sprinkler system created by two British students which uses a device attached to a kitchen sink to automatically fight fires has won a major international design prize.

Yusuf Muhammed and Paul Thomas, who met on a design engineering course at the Royal College of Art in London, hope their Automist system, which can be fitted for a few hundred pounds, could be particularly useful in low-cost shared housing and tower blocks, where fires are particularly common and are often more deadly.

The pair won the James Dyson Award, sponsored and judged by the British vacuum cleaner magnate, against competitors in 21 countries.

Announcing the winner, Dyson said Automist could replace smoke alarms as a standard domestic fire alert in kitchens, where the bulk of domestic fires begin.

"This simple but clever device should become a permanent safety feature in the home," he said. "Smoke alarms are essential part of modern life but have remained fundamentally unchanged for 40 years. Automist not only detects a fire but can put it out as well."

The creation can be fitted to any standard kitchen tap. If a fire breaks out, a built-in heat detector triggers a pump installed under the sink which sends out a high pressure mist of water droplets through nozzles at the base of the tap unit, suppressing the blaze.

Muhammed said the duo came up with the idea after examining conventional home fire-fighting products for a university project.

"We learned that fire extinguishers can sometimes actually be a hazard, because people stay and try to fight the fire rather than just getting out. We wanted to design something that would use a completely different approach," he said.

Their design came to fruition following discussions with firefighters in London, as well as experts in water misting technology.

Automist was specifically created as a relatively low-cost product which can be fitted with minimal fuss into blocks of flats and homes shared by a number of occupants, Muhammed said.

"It would cost a lot less than putting in a mains sprinkler system, where the building work and the piping can be intrusive as well," he said.

Muhammed, 26, and Thomas, 37, are now have now joined with two recent MBA graduates to form a company to produce the device, which is undergoing more testing.