Composition of material for stopping fires or explosions, and method and apparatus therefor.

摘要

A new form of expandable slit metal foil (10) which may be stretched into a three-dimensional metal net useful in extinguishing surface fires, preventing explosions in fuel containers, and the like. The product is a continuous sheet of metal foil (10) with lines of slits (11) transverse to the longitudinal dimension of the sheet (10). The sheet (10) has no unslit longitudinal margins resisting longitudinal stretching, and thus compact rolls of unstretched foil (10) may be transported to sites of fires and stretched into metal nets as they are unrolled over the surface of a fire, The expanded metal net may also be formed into small ellipsoids to be filled into fuel containers for the prevention of explosions. The invention also includes methods and apparatus for producing the expandable metal foil (10) and the ellipsoids, and methods for extinguishing land or water surface fires and preventing explosions in fuel tanks.