FireRein:
Prevent, protect, extinguish
Q
uincy Emmons, a fire captain with Stone Mills Fire Department, had heard about a new fire-
with questions from a graduate stu-
fighting technology: a fire suppression
contacted the company about pos-
gel. The gel was sold as a powder re-
sible investment and Canadian dis-
quiring a mixing process taking up to
tributorship.
dent doing market research on behalf of a firefighting gel company. Sells answered the student’s questions, then
five minutes or longer. Emmons and
Emmons and Sells crossed paths
a friend devised a system minimizing
and combined their efforts, forming
mixing time down to 30 seconds and
FireRein in 2014 with Emmons’ existing
were in discussion with the company
partners. Two key principles guided
about Canadian distributorship.
their work: the firefighting gel prod-
Peter Sells, a retired district chief of
uct had to work with existing firefight-
Toronto Fire Services, wrote a regular
ing equipment, and it had to be safe
column for Fire Fighting In Canada
enough to eat.
magazine. The editor contacted Sells
Those two principles were difficult
coasthotels.com 800.663.1144 18 Saskatchewan Oil Report 2020
to reconcile. Early formulations of FireRein Eco-Gel™ had a tendency to settle, like organic peanut butter. This settling needed to be compensated for by the use of mixers, which violated the principle of compatibility with existing fire equipment. They knew that fire departments wouldn’t adopt a difficult-to-use product, but keeping the formulation 100-per cent bio-based without settling wasn’t a trivial matter. According to Sells, “We could have resolved the settling issue by including synthetic chemical components, but that would have taken away from our mission and not differentiated us from the competition.” Early adopters in Eastern Ontario included fire departments, a paper packaging plant and a plastic waste re-purposing plant. Product development efforts continued; in 2019, FireRein employed a science team headed by a PhD chemist to finalize product development, resulting in a stable hydrogel concentrate that is certified 100-per cent bio-based
