Breathe Under Water Without Oxygen Tanks

Charlie Paglee writes "An Israeli inventor has developed a way for divers to breathe underwater without cumbersome oxygen tanks. His apparatus makes use of the air that is dissolved in water like the gills of a fish. With patents in Europe and the USA how long will it take for someone to use this to swim the English Channel underwater?"

Backup oxygen?

[newnam]

Since this is has moving parts in it while are more than likey going to fail at some point, do you still need to carry a reserve oxygen tank? Does the device generate oxygen fast enough that if it does stop functioning, you have enough oxygen to get back to the surface?

Re:Not SCUBA

[Chirs]

What you have apparently neglected to consider is that the reason that "the bends" are an issue is that it is difficult to carry enough O2 to decompress on the way up.

If you had essentially unlimited O2, then you could stay deeper for longer, and do proper decompression on the way up.

As for the pressure, the air is dissolved in the water, and hence is *already* at the same pressure as the water itself. No additional pressurization necessary.

Who is going to use this?

[Locke2005]

This adds all sorts of new failure modes. What are the environmental temperature and pressure limitations of this gear? What are the chances of salt water leaking into the electronics? When a single failure can kill you, people tend to stick with tried-and-true technology. Anybody that relies on this gear is a fool. So while some divers might use this in addition to their conventional tanks to extend dive time, it isn't going to replace anybody's conventional scuba tanks.

I hope the corporate IP lawyers take note

[symbolic]

This is an invention. It is innovative, it solves a real problem, provides real value, and prior to this, did not exist. This is the kind of work that deserves patent protection. When I compare this to say, the genius behind Amazon's "one-click" patent, I find it quite humorous. There's NO COMPARISON.

Re:Great!

[climbon321]

Put it on the list of technologies being limited by the fact that advnaces in batteries aren't occuring as fast as the technology relying on them.

Biology class lied!

[g0bshiTe]

His apparatus makes use of the air that is dissolved in water like the gills of a fish.

In biology class I was taught fish breathed by filtering the oxygen molecules from the water passing over their gills, absorbing the oxygen into their bloodstream.
Someone needs to tell all the biology teachers that isn't how fish breathe. Apparently they breathe by using a small centrifuge which lowers the pressure of the seawater thereby releasing the oxygen into their bloodstream. Let's not forget the internal batteries they use to power these centrifuges as well.

Seriously, this is a fascinating idea. Though as a previous poster said, I am not sure how safe it is to breathe pure O2, usually dive tanks contain compressed air, not compressed O2. Also it has little military applications as it could not be used for deep diving due to limitations of mixing the O2 with nitrogen or even helium for deep dives. This puts using it as an emergency escape method for a sub right out, unless they are above a few hundred feet. Though this really could save a ton of lives used on ships to aid in escaping lower decks, or even fighting to regain flooded compartments, or minor repairs.

Should this technology materialize I see the biggest application in the tourism industry. Think the Great Barrier Reef, or Hawaii, or the Cayman Islands. I think this would most likely replace snorkelling as a recreation at a tourist location.

Re:I hope the corporate IP lawyers take note

[Ill_Omen]

This is an invention. It is innovative, it solves a real problem, provides real value, and prior to this, did not exist. This is the kind of work that deserves patent protection. When I compare this to say, the genius behind Amazon's "one-click" patent, I find it quite humorous. There's NO COMPARISON.
Are you sure? I wonder if on DiverDot, there aren't hoards of diving professionals complaining about how obvious this device is and how screwed up the patent system is for allowing the patent.

Re:Great technology!

[Rei]

While it sounds interesting, I don't think this tech is really such a good thing in the general case. Are those in charge of sensitive environmental sites where many divers go (say, reefs) going to like huge amounts of oxygen being stripped out of the water to support an additional population of large mammals and their metabolism-heavy brains? Even worse, I can just imagine how much damage a cave diver would do to the oxygen levels in some cave where water cycles slowly.

In the open ocean, they talk about using it on diesel submarines. Sounds great, unless you consider that if they can get oxygen out of the water, they may well try and power the engines underwater as well instead of running on batteries. That would strip huge amounts of oxygen from the water; it's more than a bit concerning.

I'd feel a lot more comfortable with a method like this being "backup oxygen", instead of it being primary oxygen with a small backup oxygen tank. Of course, it's probably heavy eq...

Also... wouldn't this be noisy? A high rpm motor centrifuging gas out of water, right on your back in an environment where sound conducts very well?

Re:Not SCUBA

[Jeremi]

If you had essentially unlimited O2, then you could stay deeper for longer, and do proper decompression on the way up.

Perhaps, but even with this device you would not have "essentially unlimited O2". The device requires a battery to operate, and when the battery runs out of juice, you stop getting air.

Truly Vaporware

[bill_kress]

Nothing but a couple of drawings and a concept. I didn't even notice TFA discussing tests, a proof of concept would have been easy.

This is just someone looking for some venture funding. My guess is that you would have to pass a lot of water through the thing to get enough oxygen out, and between that and the batteries, you'd be much worse off than with bottles.

One of those james bond devices that pulled you along and sucked the o2 out of the water as it went through he device could work, but that is nothing like the design mentioned, and would have to contain a bigger backup tank because one cold spot and your oxygen is gone.

It could supplement subs, but if you have a sub with that much power, you might as well just blast the o2 from the hydrogen with electricity and use that, much more reliable.

Rebreathers...

[MrPower]

Rebreathers have essentially three parts.

1) The gas store/s. This is the bottles of gas used to top up the system as the oxygen levels become depleted. This gas can be air, pure oxygen, nitrox (basically air with a larger percentage of oxygen added to it), trimix (a specialised mixture of nitrogen, oxygen and helium) or heliox (oxygen/heium mixture).

2) The scrubber. This canister is scrubs out any carbon dioxide exhaled by the diver.

2) The airbag (sometime refered to as a lung). This stores the air being scrubbed in a bag at ambient pressure, which is all that is required to be able to physically breathe. As the diver descends, the air in the airbag compresses and gets topped up from the gas bottles. As the dive surfaces, the air expands and an over inflation valve releases the excess gas.

As always it is way more complicated than what I described, depending on whether you are talking closed circuit or semi-closed circuit kit - but that is the basics.

Oh yeah,

I think these also have trouble delivering at any significant pressure, thus the low-depth limitations.

Not quite - as I mentioned the gas in the air bladder is at ambient - what limits depth with semi-closed circuit rebreathers (which are far more prevalent) is that the oxygen content is usually much higher than normal air. Oxygen becomes significantly toxic at a partial pressure of 1.6 ATM, which occurs at ~ 66m (220ft) breathing air or just 6m (20ft) with pure oxygen.

Should This Get A Patent?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I know that this is exactly the type of thing the patent system was designed for, and that this guy should get his patents at the drop of a hat.

But having listened to the amount for rubbish software patents and the arguments against them, I found myself thinking, on first reading the article, that he shouldn't get a patent, because it will be abused. He'll monopolise, it's not really innovative(fish do ity), he'll over price the technology, stifle innovation, etc, etc....

Wow. Software patents have really twisted my view of the whole patent system.

Think Simpler

[Effugas]

Forget about deep dives -- this could potentially be _very_ cool for diving approximately five to fifteen feet. Just being able to jaunt around a pool, or explore shallow water coral reefs, without having to maintain scuba gear would be rather cool. I imagine a snorkel that doesn't actually need to reach air.

If it was stable enough, it could even be useful for life preservers.

Re:I am also a long time diver...

[Java Ape]

I'm a diver too! I think you've forgotten that the gas saturation is directly related to pressure. Assuming the percent saturation remains constant, you'll have to process the same volume of seawater/breath at any depth. Generally speaking, however, oxygen saturation drops quickly below the photic zone unless there is a lot of wind/wave energy to foment mixing. So this probably is a shallow-water technology, but not for the reasons you stipulated.

What if you lose power?

[kkith]

WIthout the centrifuge generator then no O2. F*cked.

Re:Not SCUBA

[pmc]

You can get trained as a rec diver to use 40% 02 MAX, and definitely not for doing deco.

Oh dear - I guess my BSAC advanced nitrox qualification (50% stage mix) was just a dream then. They also do an extended range course that gives 80% stage mix. Others do 100% stage mix (dunno why - risky, little extra benefit, and considerably more expensive) Just because PADI don't do it...

But other than that spot on.