Revolutionary Scuba Mask Creates Breathable Oxygen Underwater On Its Own 375
schwit1 writes "With the Triton Oxygen Respirator, it might be possible to breathe beneath the surface of the water as if you were a fish. Requiring no bulky tank to keep your lungs pumping properly. The regulator comprises a plastic mouthpiece that requires you to simply bite down. There are two arms that branch out to the sides of the scuba mask that have been developed to function like the efficient gills of a marine creature. The scaly texture conceals small holes in the material where water is sucked in. Chambers inside separate the oxygen and release the liquid so that you can breath comfortably in the ocean."
So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable... (Score:3, Insightful)
Too good to be true.
So if it actually separates the oxygen what about the hydrogen? That's fuel.
If this is real it's more than just a breathing device, it's a low cost way to separate water into 2 Hydrogen atoms and 1 Oxygen atom. That is a much more significant breakthrough... then again that's a big IF.
Evidence please.
Re:So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable. (Score:5, Insightful)
also, breathing pure oxygen isn't so healty, so i'm wondering how they solve that without an external tank.
Re:So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, looking at TFA and following the links, this looks like premium-class bullshit. No actual science, no pictures of the proposed device (just 3D renderings), this is just science-fiction.
Re:So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable. (Score:5, Informative)
One of the deeper linked articles has what looks like real photo's.
But still, the specs sound like a typical design student project; cool-looking device using fantasy technology.
"Oh, the tech boys will work out the tiny details like the battery that's 30x smaller and 1000x faster to recharge than current batteries."
I really want this thing to be real, but I'm missing the "fugly prototype" stage.
It's a hoax (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a nice analysis:
http://deepseanews.com/2014/01/triton-not-dive-or-dive-not-there-is-no-triton/ [deepseanews.com]
Basically, it would take processing 24 gallons of water per minute with 100% efficiency (unlikely) to provide a human with enough oxygen. No way can this work as described.
However it might possibly be a start. When humans breath they don't use all the oxygen in the air up. so one could reprocess that air (as rebreathers do) and then supplement that using this device to make a better rebreather.
Re:It's a hoax (Score:4, Informative)
0) they are transferring the O2 fluid to fluid not fluid to gas which requires more energy to dedolvate it
1) they are selectively filtering for 02 using very advanced filters, so they don't have to pay the price of desolvating all the useless N2 as well
2) their filters can be powered (not just holes but can be chemically driven with active energy input) so they can use a smaller surface area to get more O2.
3) cold blooded
4) no brains to speak of (those mothers guzzle oxygen)
5) extremely efficient forward motion means that when they move they filter lots of water. when they are still they don't use much energy (they don't even have to support themselves against gravity)
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I don't think you're going much deeper than that with this thing. The gas from the tank won't be able to keep your lungs open so you won't be able to breath. OK, there is a tank filled with compressed gas, but how much power would that micro compressor get from a tiny battery?
Anyway, the tank could have some N2 in it to start with so the problem could be mitigated.
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"Anyway, the tank could have some N2 in it to start with so the problem could be mitigated."
You don't want to be breathing any N2 at depth. Ever heard of the bends.
They used to use a Helium mixture for deep dives, I am not sure what they do these days
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"Anyway, the tank could have some N2 in it to start with so the problem could be mitigated."
You don't want to be breathing any N2 at depth. Ever heard of the bends.
They used to use a Helium mixture for deep dives, I am not sure what they do these days
Outside of specialized mixtures for deep dives (well beyond the usual recreational dive limit of 130 feet), divers breathe either ordinary compressed surface air (80% nitrogen), or nitrox/EAN, which is a mix with increased oxygen content. Interestingly, the increased oxygen in nitrox is not there for its own sake (i.e. with healthy lungs there is no physiological benefit to breathing an increased fraction of oxygen), but rather as a cheap way to displace some of the nitrogen, allowing longer bottom times b
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Very good point. Pure oxygen becomes toxic below 6 meters.
Also, looking at TFA and following the links, this looks like premium-class bullshit. No actual science, no pictures of the proposed device (just 3D renderings), this is just science-fiction.
While I don't know if the device exists, we've been researching similar techniques since the 60s to help cystic fibrosis patients. The major obstacle I would see is not can the dissolved oxygen in the water be extracted, we already know it can, but can it be extracted fast enough and in enough quantity to enable a person to use it in lieu of a scuba tank?
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Re:So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable. (Score:4, Insightful)
Very good point. Pure oxygen becomes toxic below 6 meters.
A simple solution is to start with the air already in the diver's lungs, with will be 80% nitrogen, then recycle it while stripping out the CO2, and adding in the O2 from the "gills". Humans typically inhale 21% O2 and exhale 16% O2. So if you don't recycle the exhaled air, and just vent it instead, you are wasting most of the O2. For deep dives, start with a breath of argon instead of nitrogen.
Re:So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable. (Score:5, Informative)
You have a higher partial pressure of CO2 inside, so it selectively moves out; Similarly, you have a lower partial pressure of O2 inside, so it moves in. Only the inconvenience of having enough surface area prevented something like this before - You need on the order of 70m^2, with sufficient movement of both the water and air to make something like this viable. Apparently nanotech has advanced to the point where we can pack that into a pair of 2x8 inch tubes.
Re:So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable. (Score:5, Insightful)
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That was my thought too, but, it should be possible to detect such conditions. The better question is where the threshold is. There may be conditions that fish and marine life would survive where this device may not produce enough air for a human.
I imagine more of a hybrid system where this provides the normal breathing, and a backup tank only for emergency or low oxygen conditions. Even in a condition where it only provides half the oxygen you need, it could still reduce demand on the air tank allowing you
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Fortunately most divers take up the sport because we like to look at fish, not because we enjoy bathing in agricultural runoff and/or sewage. Ergo, not a lot of recreational diving in oceanic "dead zones".
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Re: water isn't 100% H20, hahaha read a book (Score:3)
Re:water isn't 100% H20, hahaha read a book (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pretty sure Mary said the same to Jesus...when he was 14 years old. It probably didn't mean the same thing back then.
Hey, that had to be a rough time for him. A teenager that can turn water to wine is automatically banned from all swim meets... nothing funnier than seeing the whole team floundering about in 40,000 gallons of chardonnay!
Being disqualified from the Science Fair for telling people that God was your Dad... and then bringing corpses back to life as proof.
Asking Joseph if you can borrow the camel for junior prom and being told to "Go ask your REAL Dad!"
No, not an easy time at all...
Re: So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable (Score:5, Informative)
Pretty sure fish gills work with dissolved oxygen, that's why the tanks need splashy things, to get the oxygen back in).
If fish were cracking apart water to breathe, we'd be researching it for energy use, like we do with plants and photosynthesis. Additionally, it'd eliminate advantage of aerobic respiration to split the water apart.
Re: So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't sound like it's separating the hydrogen and oxygen atoms, more extracting dissolved oxygen. Fish do this, so it's within the realms of possibility.
Re: So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable (Score:5, Informative)
Re: So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable (Score:5, Informative)
Yup.
Just looking at the design, other than saying "micro" a few times like waving a magic unobtanium wand, they made the impossible into a photoshopped picture.
It's a neat idea, and does have some scientific basis, but it leaves an awful lot to the imagination of the person who made the photos. I guess that's the fun of concept science. Maybe someday someone will make it real.
I did a little searching, and found "Like-A-Fish", which does appear to have something. The wiki page has more details. It requires a 1Kg battery, which lasts for one hour.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gills_%28human%29 [wikipedia.org]
http://www.likeafish.biz/ [likeafish.biz]
So, the whole thing is made from unobtanium and unicorn farts.
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Re: So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable (Score:2, Insightful)
I suppose it would be about oxygen dissolved in water.
Re:So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable. (Score:5, Informative)
Fish don't split water into hydrogen and oxygen. Rather they extract oxygen dissolved in water. However it seems like there are significant theoretical barriers to such a device because humans need a lot of O2 and seawater only has 7ppm. So you'd need to pass 192 litres of water per minute over the gill surface to get 1 litre or oxygen.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gills_(human) [wikipedia.org]
As sea water contains 7 ppm oxygen, 1,000,000 kg (1,000 tonnes) of sea water holds 7 kg (1,000 short tons holds 14 lb) of O2, the equivalent of 5,350 litres (1,410 US gal) of oxygen gas at atmospheric pressure.
An average diver with a fully closed-circuit rebreather needs 1 liter (roughly 1 quart) of oxygen per minute.[8] As a result, at least 192 litres (51 US gal) of sea water per minute would have to be passed through the system, and this system would not work in anoxic water.
On the other hand
Another potential source of oxygen generation is plastron respiration.[10] A foam with hydrophobic surfaces immersed in water becomes superhydrophobic, which provides a water-air interface across which oxygen can diffuse into the foam. In nature, this method is used by some aquatic insects (such as water boatman, Notonecta) and spiders (such as Dolomedes triton) to breathe underwater without a gill. This method was experimentally proven by professor Ed Cussler on his dog
They don't say how big the apparatus was or what the flow rate was. There's an interview with Cussler here.
http://www.naturesraincoats.com/Experiments_Plastron%20Respiration.html [naturesraincoats.com]
If you look here it seems like artificial gills do need a high flow rate.
There's an interesting New Scientist article about artificial gills here
http://s3.amazonaws.com/lcp/artedi/myfiles/Breathing%20in%20oceans.pdf [amazonaws.com]
Re:So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable. (Score:5, Insightful)
However it seems like there are significant theoretical barriers to such a device because humans need a lot of O2 and seawater only has 7ppm.
Indeed; fish deal with this by being low metabolism 'cold blooded' creatures. Humans, on the other hand, are mammals with a much higher metabolic rate and correspondingly higher oxygen use to support that.
Every time a sci-fi series has added 'gills' to a human to let them swim underwater I have laughed, the traditional make up for this, three flaps on each side of the neck, would not suffice for a fish.. let alone a human.
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These types of devices have existed in the SCUBA community for quite a while -- they are known as rebreathers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebreather [wikipedia.org] . Usual rebreathers add O2 from an external tank and replenish (as oppose to air/nitrox from a regular scuba tank). This device is supposed to extract o2 from the water using an osmosis type of approach. Should be doable, but I don't know how it could keep up based on the design.
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I'd like an interview with his dog
Wow
such breathing
so wet
Re:So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable. (Score:4, Insightful)
nothing happens, its NOT a product, its a pretty 3D render and a VC bait,
Re:So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable. (Score:5, Funny)
But dude, the micro compressor operates through micro battery! Seems legit.
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Too good to be true.
So if it actually separates the oxygen what about the hydrogen? That's fuel.
If this is real it's more than just a breathing device, it's a low cost way to separate water into 2 Hydrogen atoms and 1 Oxygen atom. That is a much more significant breakthrough... then again that's a big IF.
Evidence please.
yes because fish always emit bubbles of hydrogen from their gills
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Too good to be true.
Not at all:
Using a very small but powerful micro compressor, it compresses oxygen and stores the extracted oxygen in storage tank.
The micro compressor operates through micro battery.
No-one said it was a free lunch.
So if it actually separates the oxygen...
It doesn't. There's plenty of molecular oxygen dissolved in seawater. The fish know.
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Too good to be true.
Not at all:
That is to say, there are plenty of reasons why this thing is too good to be true, but GP's complaints are not among them.
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Considering that the "micro compressor" and "micro battery" only exist as nondescript blocks in one CAD rendering, I'd say that it is too good to be true. A "microbattery" not much larger than a CR2032 that's "a next-generation technology with a size 30 times smaller than current battery that can quickly
Re:So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable. (Score:5, Insightful)
As others have said the device appears to be extracting dissolved oxygen, using filters that pass the oxygen but not water, so there wouldn't be much hydrogen present.
As it happens though I actually built a prototype electrolytic breathing device in middle school. There's no really cheap way to separate water molecules - at 100% efficiency it requires exactly as much energy as you would get from burning the H2 again, anything else would let you build perpetual motion machines. But with enough power something like electrolysis can be used to fragment the molecules, and it's easy enough to capture the gasses separately. The real problem is that pure oxygen is really nasty stuff at the pressures necessary for you to operate your lungs underwater, so you need to mix it with an inert gas to bring the partial pressure down to safe levels. And it would seem to me a filter process would have similar problems, though perhaps it can also extract other dissolved gasses along with the oxygen. If that's the case though it seems like you would want to monitor the gas mixture very carefully - swimming through a particularly oxygen rich or poor region of water could have nasty effects as your breathe-gas ratios change. Especially since we're not wired to be able to detect oxygen deprivation - only CO2 buildup. So long as our lungs can expel CO2 our first warning of oxygen deprivation is impaired cognitive abilities, which can easily pass unnoticed, followed IIRC by, giddiness and extreme judgement impairment, headache, and death. Oxygen toxicity is even more dangerous, it can cause seizures without any prior warning, resulting in near-certain death given the hostile environment.
You also can't really burn the H2 to recapture any energy, you need oxygen to do that. And you just gave the oxygen to that human you're keeping alive. You could possibly get some reaction going with the waste CO2, but I think there aren't a lot of candidate reactions to actually produce energy, CO2 seems to consistently be one of the end-products of efficient combustion. That leaves any O2 that passed through the diver's lungs unused, which may indeed be more efficient than trying to separate it from the CO2 for re-use, but after factoring in generating electricity from combustion you're talking maybe 30% of whatever percentage of oxygen was left unused, that could easily be such a small percentage of the initial energy that it's not worth considering.
My own red flag was
"- The micro battery is a next-generation technology with a size 30 times smaller than current battery that can quickly charge 1,000 times faster.”
So you're building a life-support device unlike anything seriously attempted before, and you choose to use an unproven next-gen battery system that's dramatically better than anything in use, but not so much dramatically better that hauling around a soda-can sized battery based on tried-and true tech couldn't deliver pretty much the same thing? This thing is, at best, a tech demo. And given the apparent total disregard for oxygen toxicity if it actually exists it's also a death trap.
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You know, your analysis reminded me - wouldn't this be possibly more suited, at least in initial use, for use on a submarine or underwater structure? I could see it being useful if the overall power demands are less than electrolysis, cheaper, removes need to dispose of relatively large amounts of hydrogen, etc...
THEN you work on miniaturizing it so it can become the next generation of SCUBA.
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Are you so confident that the pool water contains an adequate amount of oxygen? Most aren't significantly aerated, and gasses precipitate out of still water. 5-15 minuets of oxygen starvation could well do serious permanent damage. Not to mention if you're extracting other gasses you'd have to worry about the toxic chlorine gas dissolved in tap water, to say nothing of highly chlorinated pool water - it's safe enough to drink a few glasses of it, but extracting it from hundreds of liters of water per minut
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However, a pool builder who might want to put a technician below the surface of pool water for 5 - 15 minutes to work on a repair might not want to pay for the SCUBA training and maintenance.
I'd look at a snorkel, personally.
This product [supersnorkel.com] might also work.
How? Dear God, how? (Score:4, Insightful)
I make no comment on idiots posting ignorant tosh when they bloody well should know better if they've ever eg. seen a fish and wondered how it breathes.
But how the fucking hell did this get modded insightful?
I mean, I could understand interesting. After all, morons can be interesting if their stupidity reaches the right sort of rarefied heights. They become a curiosity and we can peer at them through the bars of the cage and be reassured that, no matter what we've done to the world and each other, nature can still have its way and throw up the sort of laughable dunce who really ought to have entered the Darwin award nominations long ago. We can meditate on the extreme tail of any probability distribution that keeps such a person alive for this long and reflect that life is like a box of chocolates.
But insightful? I can only suppose that we are meant to learn that no moderation system is perfect and the award of mod points does not automatically bestow wisdom.
Re: How? Dear God, how? (Score:5, Informative)
I suppose it just goes to show that there really ought to be a "-1 Fucking Retard" moderation option.
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It doesn't separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. It extracts dissolved oxygen from water.
Re: So what happens to the hydrogen? That's usable (Score:3)
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Haha what are you even talking about? It separates dissolved O2, not chemically bound O2. That is, assuming it works.
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"So if it actually separates the oxygen what about the hydrogen? That's fuel."
We'll read about that as soon as 20 users try this out in an indoor pool for the first time.
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Too good to be true.
So if it actually separates the oxygen what about the hydrogen? That's fuel.
If this is real it's more than just a breathing device, it's a low cost way to separate water into 2 Hydrogen atoms and 1 Oxygen atom. That is a much more significant breakthrough... then again that's a big IF.
Evidence please.
Not only that, you could burn the oxygen and hydrogen and get pure water AND energy out of it.
Somehow I think that whatever this thing is doing, it's not doing what they think it is doing.
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After looking around the internet a bit, it looks like this is more of a design students wet dream project. His website details how
oh come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:oh come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite. This is merely a concept, not an actual working product.
It's certainly interesting, and I was all excited for a little bit, but there is no product here. There is no revolutionary scuba mask. (And if it is, I can mock up some pictures of a "revolutionary 'bird-wings'" that allows people to merely flap their arms and fly! Oh, on Earth.)
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Re:oh come on (Score:5, Funny)
It works with hot fusion. Unfortunately, when you fly too close to the power source all the wax melts and your wings fall apart. This happened in beta-testing, and the tester died :(.
Re:oh come on (Score:4, Funny)
That was ages ago and it's still in beta? They should just rename the project Google Wings...
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"developed by a Korean scientist"? That's exactly how magic supplement pills are marketed. Ooooh, mysterious secret Asian technologies.
Unlikely (Score:5, Informative)
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Actually his statements suggest that it's quite possible, just not in the form-factor claimed, and not without a rebreather to recycle the inert gasses, because you can't safely breathe pure O2 at underwater pressures. That second one is what kept me from ever actually live-testing middle-school science fair project - I was extracting plenty of O2 via electrolysis, but fortunately one of my contacts in my search for information on prior projects warned me of the dangers before I sent myself into sudden und
Re:Unlikely (Score:5, Funny)
If the device sucks in enough water to filter into breathable air, you'd be propelled through water at ~200mp/h from your mouthpiece.
I haven't done the math on this, so I could be off a bit.
Pure Oxygen? (Score:2, Interesting)
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Nitrox is used so that you can dive longer....
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You need about 0.2 ATM oxygen partial pressure at more or less any altitude. So even at the surface this thing would need other gasses to keep you healthy. If it's got some sort of gas segregation technology it's possible to build a re-breather system that mostly re-uses the non-oxygen, non-CO2 gasses, but that's not a trivial task even if you have a readily available supply of oxygen.
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And actually most people can even push that number down to around 0.1ATM partial pressure with some acclimation training, with peoplethough that's more applicable to space suits than underwater where you have a certain unavoidable pressure crushing your ribs that must be counteracted by an internal pressure in your lungs if you want to be physically capable of inhaling. Excess oxygen though, not a pretty picture.
I wonder - it seems to me most rebreather technology is based on removing CO2 from a normal-ish
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Yes. If this device actually existed, you would convulse and die the first time you used it. 30 feet would actually be much too deep for any significant amount of time. In general, more than 1.2 atm O2 is considered dangerous (military goes to 1.4 IIRC). At 33 feet you would be breathing pure O2 at 2 atm.
Of course since it seems to also claim it has a magic battery and an impossibly small compressor, I'm thinking it's pure pipe dream.
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Most divers use compressed air. Nothing else.
Oxygen becomes quite a problem after 1.6 bar (or 1.6 atm) partial pressure. Exposure to 1.0 bar partial pressure O2 can be tollerated up to 5 hours. With 1.6 bar partial pressure O2 circa 15 min. There are also cumulative exposures limits to be followed. Divers doing deep dives or dives using compressed air with enriched O2 (Nitrox) use tables to find out their exposure limit to oxygen.
The maximum exposure limit for non-professional divers is commonly given to be
Re:Pure Oxygen? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nitrox is oxygen-enriched for longer dive times - you can breathe less volume, and less nitrogen means you can go a little longer without decompression sickness. It's commonly used by recreational divers.
You might be confusing it with heliox, which is a bloody-expensive helium-oxygen mix. No nitrogen means no nitrogen narcosis and greatly reduced decompression issues, and a below-atmospheric oxygen concentration solves the oxygen toxicity problem. It's rarely used by recreational divers because it's hard to swim after you've sold an arm and a leg to buy some. Heliox is the domain of deep commercial/industrial divers.
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A system of gills would have to be combined with a closed circuit of air so the nitrogen is recycled, and a filter to absorb carbon dioxide as they do in submarines. One could imagine a submarine station with huge gills to provide air for the occupants. But making it compact enough to carry it around seems like a challenge of another order.
concept not engineered device (Score:5, Informative)
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No it wouldn't.
With open-circuit gear this would give you nothing - there's more Oxygen than you need in your breathing mix already, adding yet more would be worthless, if not dangerous (Oxygen is toxic at elevated pp)
With a rebreather, Oxygen isn't the limiting factor - that's why rebreathers only have small tanks attached (unless they're intended for bailout purposes as well)
Even if it existed, this device would be worthless at best and lethal at worst.
Just suck harder? (That's what he said...) (Score:5, Funny)
The scaly texture conceals small holes in the material where water is sucked in.
Good thing Ocean water is free of any particulate matter that might clog these tiny little holes.
Poor English (Score:4, Informative)
Did anyone notice the poor English throughout the article?
The micro compressor operates through micro battery.
try
The micro compressor operates using a micro battery.
Nothing goes through the battery.
The micro battery is a next-generation technology with a size 30 times smaller than current battery that can quickly charge 1,000 times faster.
try
The micro battery is a next-generation technology with a size 30 times smaller than current battery and can quickly charge 1,000 times faster.
The original sounds like the current batter can charge 1,000 times faster.
I may be jaded but every time I see "Korean scientist" I am skeptical.
The one killer for the device is that we need to empty and re-fill our lungs to breath. There is no re-breather bag in the device to facilitate that and no way to get a proper air mixture from the device.
It is a hoax.
Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
The scaly texture conceals small holes in the material where water is sucked in.
I think the /. editors have been sucked in.
So instead of diving for hours with an air tank... (Score:4, Interesting)
... you get to dive for the 10 minutes that the "micro-battery" can provide power?
Seriously we go through this every time one of these artificial gills is announced, you need too high a flow rate for a battery to realistically be able to provide power for, so you end up with a system that lasts for far less time than a simple air tank could provide.
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Well besides the fact that when you get a leak somewhere with a tank you still have time left (hopefully) to get to safety (depending on the size of the leak). A problem with the gills results in having no air whatsoever instantly. Dunno, I think I prefer tried and true technology in this case :)
Sod artificial gills (Score:2)
Design vs Reality / Surgical approach (Score:4, Informative)
Apart from the fact that the numbers just don't add up and you'd have to flow enormous amounts of seawater through the device, there are a couple of other problems:
- Breathing pure oxygen is fine at surface pressure, but it quickly becomes toxic when submerged
- You want the rest of your breathing air (21% oxygen or less, as you descend) to be made up of an inertial gas
- Lungs need to inhale and exhale to get the gas exchange in the alveoli to work, so you need a full lung volume of gas available at any time, not just the amount of oxygen required to run your body
- To get rid of CO2, you either have to release gas into the surrounding water, or scrub the CO2 using something such as soda lime
- Apart from the scrubber, you need to have these additional parts for it all to work:
1) some kind of counter-lung to allow for breathing movement
2) some kind of pressurized gas to increase the amount of gas in your lungs/counter-lung to compensate for the compression of it all at depth and to dilute the O2 content of the breathing gas
So, great idea. You have to lug a full rebreather system with you for it all to work, but luckily you can leave the 2 liter oxygen tank at home and use these fantastic gills instead - until the not-yet-invented next-generation battery powering the extremely powerful "Micro-Compressor" runs out of juice.
The only way this could work out to be something useful would be to hook up a major blood vessel to the device, allowing for gas exchange O2 CO2 between the water flow and the blood through the device, bypassing the lungs altogether. As an alternative, fill the lungs with a liquid (as in liquid breathing) and do the gas exchange between the breathing liquid and the water. Less messy that surgery.
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>Less messy that surgery.
Well, at least until the time comes to get that fluid out of your lungs again. I seem to remember that most of the rats demonstrating those liquid breathing systems died afterwards due to complications related to the liquid. It's a promising concept, but for now you'll probably live longer with the surgery.
Liars, damn liars and battery engineers (Score:2, Interesting)
A battery that is 1000x better than current technology would be even bigger news.
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Really? Seems like we've got lots of those - just nothing ready to leave the lab at anything approaching competitive prices and/or reliability. Now a 30x higher energy density battery that's actually reliable enough to power a life support system, and cheap enough to be useful, that *would* be news.
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Really? Seems like we've got lots of those - just nothing ready to leave the lab at anything approaching competitive prices and/or reliability. Now a 30x higher energy density battery that's actually reliable enough to power a life support system, and cheap enough to be useful, that *would* be news.
No, not really. Even a crap battery that only lasted 6 hours but yet charged "1,000 times faster" than any battery we have on the market today would find a large demand in portable electronics. Likely a multi-billion dollar demand.
Believe me, I was more targeted on the battery tech in this article too, since the rest of it was more hype than reality.
Looks like a scam (Score:3, Funny)
Oxygen only? (Score:3, Interesting)
Breathing only oxygen is dangerous. Oxygen is toxic at high pressure.
With the device described here you'd still need a tank with nitrogen or helium and then you're back to having a device similar to a rebreather where you have to carry and mix your own gasses, which is extremely dangerous and even experienced divers get killed by it.
Now this technology is not completely useless and could enhance a rebreather by allowing more bottom time if it can be used to refill the oxygen tank or something on that line.
Art project (Score:4, Informative)
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Why are people blogrolling this BS? (Score:2)
I see a continuous stream of BS stories like this in all the blogrolling sites. /.used to filter some of these out, but no longer.
We need to stop reporting art projects as if they are real. For the good of humanity!
Suspicious (Score:3)
Re:Nitrogen (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps you should read the linked arrticle instead of making a fool of yourself. ... sea water is H2O + dissolved gases. ...
Water is H2O
An artificial gill is used to fetch those gases out of the water.
So: it has nothing to do with your H2O - nitrogen equation.
The question if those "dissolved gases" are similar to air, or if it is indeed relatively pure oxigen and your concern applies, is still open.
Some people here already posted that this is only a concept and the gill is to small to support the needs of a human
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Seriously, this is a hoax. It's purely a design concept. Pure oxygen at dive pressures can kill. And there is no guarantee that dissolved gases will NOT be pure oxygen. Or you might be in an oxygen depleted area.
Read the comments on the design website by real divers concerning partial pressure, etc.
http://www.yankodesign.com/2014/01/03/scuba-breath/#comments
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Of course you can survive with 100% oxygen. The question is, how long can you survive with 100% oxygen.
Re: (Score:3)
There's nitrogen dissolved in the water too.
It's still bogus though. A device like that couldn't pull enough oxygen from the water to sustain a human. Not even close. A functional one would have to be far, far larger.
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Water is H2O - the air we breathe is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% other stuff. I don't see 'N' in the H2O equation. Humans cannot survive with pure oxygen. This is bogus.
The "James Bond Mouthpiece" idea is definitely bogus.
However, assuming (for the sake of argument) you could extract oxygen from water in useful quantities, I suppose you could take a rebreather [wikipedia.org] apparatus (which scrubs out the excess CO2 and recycles the nitrogen and unused oxygen) and use your artificial gills to help keep the oxygen levels topped up.
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I don't see 'N' in the H2O equation. [...] This is bogus.
Indeed. This is why fish can't possibly exist.
Re: (Score:3)
No. If you breathe hyperbaric O2 for too long you will convulse. If you convulse under water you will drown.
There are rebreathers that involve a counter lung and maintain the breathing gas by scrubbing CO2 and adding pure O2 (and submarines do that as well), but the 'concept' device shown has none of those features.
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They (theorically) separate the dissolved oxygen from the liquid...
Re: (Score:3)
What makes you assume the goggles have anything to do with the SCUBA mask? They're more a standard accessory, they certainly have precious little to do with breathing, that's done by the mouthpiece part of the mask. More importantly while it is a mouth-covering mask, it's not SCUBA
SCUBA = Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus
A breathing apparatus that extracts oxygen from the surrounding water is by definition not self contained - swim into low-oxygen water and you're in for a world of hurt. It m
Re: (Score:2)
Well I can't think of a substantially less wrong headline. No, it's not actually SCUBA, but close enough for non-technical journalism. If the the headline instead said "Revolutionary UBA Mask Creates Breathable Oxygen Underwater On Its Own" I would agree that it is more technically correct, but less effective and informative. Especially since the Scuba headline is self-contradictory in a manner that immediately exposes the false use of SCUBA to anyone who cares, while simultaneously evoking the entirely a
Re: (Score:2)