27 Responses to “New way to breath under water without oxygen tanks”
1. Anonymous Mar 24th, 2007 at 12:30 am
Cool, than you could be like a fishy.
2. Natalia Mar 24th, 2007 at 12:38 am
Yeah, how does one extract oxygen from hydrogen?
3. Robert Mar 24th, 2007 at 12:40 am
Think he meant water. I think it is a typo or a misstatement. On a nuclear submarine they have plenty
of electrical power so they use electrolysis to separate
Hydrogen and Oxygen from water. It is rather simple
(they do it in basic high school chemistry class all the time), just run a
current through water. Best if you
add a little Sulfuric Acid (a drop or two) and DC current will
allow you to collect O2 at one electrode and H2 at the other. (water being H2O)
4. Ali Mar 24th, 2007 at 12:43 am
He is stating that his device Does not do electrolisys. Think of soda. How it has co2 in it.
Now basically using the soda example his machine would basically
take in the co2 bubbles without taking in the air.
So all his machine is doing is taking out the air from the water (not the o2).
Think of his machine as artificial gills.
5. Schmid Mar 24th, 2007 at 12:44 am
It is a good idea. However closed scuba systems are not for your usual recreational diver. They are a lot more complex to use,
a LOT more training. If you
don't use closed scuba often you increase your risk. It takes training to use a closed scuba
system and a lot more can go wrong. (eg you can't easily detect
CO2 build up so you have to monitor it. Same with O2 build up.
At depth O2 can be toxic to the central nervous system. An accumulation of one or the other
is quite possible in a closed system.)
Military uses abound.
6. Shandooga Mar 24th, 2007 at 7:51 am
So what about the bends? I didn't read anything about the nitrogen that would build up in the blood.
7. Josh Mar 24th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
So why does it look exactly like a snorkle, mask and flippers? Doesn't this thing work by leaving one end out of the water
and sticking the other in your mouth?
Gee. It is a snorkle. I had one as a kid back in the 1940's.
8. Professo Mar 24th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Electrolysis is the separation of oxygen from hydrogen. Oxygen is bonded to hydrogen in water, and through electolysis,
you remove the oxygen from the
hydrogen, giving you oxygen and hydrogen. It is not a snorkel. That picture is to illustrate
the general topic, numbnuts. Read the article and try to understand
it before makin criticisms on a subject you quite
obviously know nothing about.
9. Bioshark Mar 24th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
Its still really cool.
10. Jelle Mar 24th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Schmidt, your concern about closed diving systems, AKA rebreathers is valid. But you seem to have missed the point that
this is not a closed system: it is open
at two ends: one end to let the seawater( dissolved air) in, and one end to let the water
minus the oxygen out. It's not clear to me if the used air is just expelled
or is recylced. Maybe you could use the same trick
with conventional rebreathers to scrub the CO2.
As for that one kilo Lithium battery they are talking about: that is a serious amount of energy. A 60 gram one can hold about 11
WattHours, so 1 kilo can hold
about 180 WattHours. That could provide a nice propulsion stream with the exaust water too…
11. Mr. Ivory Tower Mar 24th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Ok, as the professor said, this vest will not perform electrolysis. That is to day it will NOT separate H20, increase the
concentration gradient of both and encourage
O=O bonding. What it will do is quite adequately explained by Ali, if a little
muddled. Notice how when you open a can of soda you hear the ‘hiss' of escaping gas?
Well, why didn't it burst out before
you opened it? The strength of the aluminum? No. It was pressurized, allowing more gas to dissolve into solution. You relieve
that
pressure and free the gas. This would do the same, taking in water and relieving the pressure, allowing for consumption.
12. Mikey K Mar 24th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
In the article, the inventor himself says that the system is only really feasible in conjunction with rebreathing aparatus
and still needs to pump through about
200 litres of water per minute, and that is still quite a lot (3 litres per second, i.e. on a
10cm cross section pipe, we're talking about a water jet of about
30cm-40cm a second. Plus you can't reuse any of the water, so
there are a lot of problems invovled. And since we're using rebreathers, any talk of having
‘just a compact vest' is utter
nonsense: Rebreathers are big, heavy, cumbersome, complicated and very susceptible to failure. Add to this that the gadget
also fails if you go through a pocket of oxygen-poor water (such as the water you've just been through) and you have a
reliability nightmare on your hands.
It's hard to work out what advantage this device offers: Divers are still subject to
the same constraints: Nitrogen build-up (i.e. decompression sickness),
nitrogen narcosis and oxygen toxicity - the only
difference is you have a fuel cell instead of an oxygen tank and more gadgetry.
13. Chris Mar 24th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Please put a few line breaks in your next article. It is so hard to read a gigantic brick of text.
14. Ray McConn Mar 24th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Dig through your old National Geographic magazines, cave diving scientists in Mexico use such technology for about last 15
years! It's funny how something
gets invented in this world of ours, it the MARKETER that gets the fame for inventing it.
15. Anonymous Mar 24th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
15l of air per minute is a tiny amount for an open circuit and so it would have to be used closed.
16. Zarano Mar 24th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
This would be very good if you could use some sort of gyro to recharge the battery as you where swimming.
17. Zarano Mar 24th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
I have a better idea, stuck your face a fish's ass and let him do the breathing for you and go for the dive.
18. Advisor7 Mar 24th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
It is based upon simple physics.
1 The water contains disolved oxyge,
2 This oxygen can be accesses by flowing it into a container where the pressure is loswer.
3 The oxygen depleted water flows out and is freplaces by fresh water.
4 The major problem is what to do with the exhaled crbon dioxide. It is usually combined with calts carried in
the device. Alternately it can be put back
under pressure into the water flowing out. This takes more energy. The
same rotating device that reduces presuure for the incomming water can be connected
to the waste gas
pressuring stage.
5 The linit is the available power.
19. Gabor Mar 25th, 2007 at 12:33 am
Actually, the 15 liter per minute flow is actually 30 liters per minute - not much, but it may be enough with the reserve
tank shown in the flash presentation (do
look at it, it will clear much of the confusion in the previous comments). With
each breath, you exchange no more than 3 liters of air, and that would mean 10
breaths at lest, without the reserve…
In my oppinion, this system is most likely to make it to market as a semi-closed system with a computer controlling
all
aspects of gas mixture, with scrubber included. (unfortunately, as this makes it all the more error-prone,
expensive and complicated). It must also be noted,
that the system looks like it could be scaled, and hence its output
relies mainly on the amount of power available. Given the massive research in the area of
batteries, the 30 liter per
minute output may easily be improved to support a simple open system cost effectively. Here is an interesting maths
problem for you:
if you have a 12 liter compressed air tank at the normal 200 bar pressure, that will give you a total
of 2400 liters of air on the surface. At 10m bellow water, that
makes a theoretical (no reserve!) maximum of 1200 liters.
If you consume that at 30 liters a minute (theoretical output of this apparatus), then you get 40
minutes of bottom time.
I've been down there longer with a tank, so I think 30 liters a minute will be quite enough.
Sorry for being long :)
20. The Wizard Mar 25th, 2007 at 4:41 am
I'm anxious to see a prototype. And yes, several questions come to mind…. How deep of a depth will it allow a diver to go?
What about the nitrogen saturation?
Will a diver have to surface in a timed fashion as with normal gear?
How large of a unit will it be?
What kind of a failsafe to protect the diver from a battery malfunction?
It is a great idea…..hopefully it will not just be a military application.
21. The Mojojojo Mar 25th, 2007 at 5:03 am
Finally we can enjoy underwater lovemaking, damn i hated those tanks..
22. Bruce Ramsey Mar 25th, 2007 at 7:36 am
Way cool! And invented by someone from Israel, too. WHY is it that the Jews perform so many technological miracles and the
Muslims…well, you know?
23. Friend Mar 25th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Interesting. It will have to account for Henry's Law in that it will need to work harder at greater depths to produce
the same amount of oxygen. A simple depth
gauge wouldn't work b/c of the high cost of being wrong, so there must be an interesting
negative feedback loop setup measuring the actual production of oxygen.
Good article!
24. Stephen Mar 25th, 2007 at 11:56 am
There are however a few unanswered questions and problems with this system…..
Firstly, to breath at depth we need pressurized air to expand our lungs, our diaphragms and intercostal muscles are
insufficient to inflate our lungs at depths
much greater than 2 metres. In that case, Henry's Law or not, you would lose out by
the fact that any extra O2 stored in pressurized water would need to be
used in pressurising the breathable gasses.
Secondly, breathing pure O2 at depth is fraught with it's own dangers of narcosis effects, as discovered by
WWII frogmen….hence SCUBA uses Air, Nitrox,
Heli-Ox etc and never pure O2. I may be wrong but I'm not aware that Nitrogen
dissolves all that well in water.
Thirdly, it would be a folly to make any comparison between how this machine works and a fish's ability to
extract O2 from water as they have blood that is
very very good at drawing the oxygen out of the water at very little loss.
In all I would suspect that this device might be able to draw oxygen from the water, but whether or
not we could breath it is a different matter.
25. Diver Mar 25th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
‘well you know', what?
Bruce you had to bring religion, politics and your ugly side out, get a life man, go dive, meet people, jews,
christians, muslims, athiests for all I care maybe
you'll learn a thing or two and we'd have one less ignorant's filth
staining our world…
Thanks to everyone that is sharing their invaluable analysis and knowledge.
26. Benny Mar 26th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Israeli vaporware. The only thing that desolves is the investors money.
27. Silver Mar 26th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
Professor, you're not too sharp at detecting the sarcasm, you numbbrain.
It cannot be closed circuit - by definition is has an intake and is therefore open circuit.
“Studies have shown that in a depth of 200m below the sea there is still about 1.5% of dissolved air” Where did this
information come from? What does 1.5%
mean - 1.5% of the amount at the compared to that at the surface?
This means processing a large volume of water: If you use 1 unit mass of air at the surface then that amount of
air will be contained with approx 66 times that
volume at depth.
1.5% of mass is air at that depth?
This makes life a bit easier. A few grams of air can come from a couple of hundred grams of water.
So, any volunteers for the first dive to 200m?