Came across a link to this today and it sounds really interesting.
Basically an invention that will allow a diver to breathe air processed directly from seawater (like a fish as per the commentary).
Anyone know their science well enough to comment on whether or not it is viable or not?
Hmmm…interesting.
But that page doesn’t give much data.
And there are no photos of it working underwater.
If it was any good at all, you’d think they’d post a photo.
Hmmm…scam.
well here is the original post regarding it, including pics of prototype and links to the European Patent registry and the specific patent. I don’t know anything about patent registries though I think the patent is legit.
Just wondering about the technology itself. Is it plausible? Or just another ‘couldabeen’ patent?
I was thinking just the other day how cool it would be to have an underwater breathing apparatus like in The Phantom Menace. This thing looks about the size of SCUBA gear though, so what the hell is the point?
From the link in the OP:
Is this true? If so, I learned something today. I thought fish’s gills somehow drew oxygen out of the H[sub]2[/sub]O.
Re: The patent: I don’t think an invention necessarily has to be “legit” to get a patent. I’m pretty sure there are people that have patents on time machines and “perpetual motion” devices. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
Here is the scoop on how fish breathe: http://www.geocities.com/aquarium_fish/how_fish_breathe.htm
There is, no doubt, some creature somewhere that performs an electrochemical extraction of oxygen from water, but in general both all forms of vertebrate “fish”, including rays, sharks, lamphreys, eels, hagfish, and the various members of phyllum mollusca and subphyllum [iarthropoda Crustacea* use gills or exposed membranes to absorb free oxygen in the ocean. This is a problem where a lot of dumping of fertilizer resuidue or high saline content causes oxygen depletion via various mechanisms. See the Wikis on oxygen depletions and dead zones, although, as with all Wikis, take them with a bit of salt. Just not enough to cause oxygen depletion.
Although I can’t find a specific regulation, it is general knowledge that the US Patent and Trademark Office will not offer a patent to a device that is based upon principles which violate fundamental physical laws, i.e. violation of thermodynamic principles. That general rule notwithstanding, there is no requirement that one present a working model of a device to obtain a patent, merely a concept sufficiently developed to render it distinct from any other patented or common domain device, and the patent record is certainly full of concepts unworkable or unrealized due to technical infeasibility. But you do have to at least pretend that your object will function outside of an Art Bell inspired monologue or an episode of Dr. Who.
Stranger
Well We See Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon do it… so we know it has to be invented right? I saw it on the movie, so it has to be real right?
Assuming the technology works, it would give divers unlimited time underwater, as they would not have to carry air with them. Though that might have implications for dissolved nitrogen in the bloodstream (“the bends”).
I thought this was already possible, with a “rebreather” invented by Jacques Cousteau or someone of similar fame?
Do freshwater fish breathe this way? I can’t imagine there being much “free oxygen” at the bottom of a deep, still lake.
Dissolved nitrogen has a saturation level for each “tissue compartment” (not actual tissues but a virtual model which rates each “compartment” by how fast the gas is absorbed and readmitted) after which you don’t absorb any more. For long duration diving, when the tissues become saturated, you have to ascend slowly so that each compartment has time to come to equilibrium with the outside pressure, such that the nitrogen doesn’t become oversaturated in the blood and start bubbling out of solution (which is what causes decompression illness or “the bends”). You’d just have to be careful about how quickly you ascend.
The problem I see, from what little information is presented, is that extracting dissolved oxygen (or electrolysizing oxygen from water, or whatever) isn’t enough; you can only allow oxygen to get to a certain partial pressure under water, beyond which the diver will suffer the effects of oxygen toxicity. This means that you have to mix oxygen with another gas, like (at lesser depths) nitrogen (as exists in normal atmosphere) and at greater depths, helium or other noble gases. Devices called rebreathers, which control the oxgyen levels via a regulator and small oxygen tank along with a larger “air bladder”, already permit divers to stay at depth for long periods of time. Closed circuit rebreathers in combination with “trimix” gases can allow deep diving as well (below normal atmospheric air diving limits) but the mixture has to be carefully monitored. Extracting dissolved oxgyen from the water would prevent you from having to carry an oxygen tank, but since the amount of oxygen isn’t great to begin with I don’t see the utility of it.
What I want is one of those cool pencil sized rebreathers that James Bond used in Thunderball. Legend has it that an inventor was working on such a device when the film came out and was despondent that someone else had already figured it out, until he contacted the filmmakers and found out that they just had the actor pretend to breathe from the device.
Stranger
Not unlimited time, just until the battery runs out.
As far as I know, rebreathers are ‘chemical scrubbers’, which work by cleaning out your air using, well, chemicals. This gives them a limited lifespan of use since once the filters are used up, thats all you get (limiting diving time to filter size). Also they severely limit how deep you can go without adding complexity of the system. Without adding some way of pressurizing the air bladder you can only go down about 10 feet (this information is pretty old and drawn from my imperfect memory, so there may be newer versions of rebreathers that can do more).
The advantage of this system is 1) you don’t run out of oxygen since you’re drawing it from the water itself and 2) its already under pressure (this second one is my understanding of it, which as can be gathered from my opening question, is limited indeed). As mentioned already once you go below a certain depth you start running into other problems (the need to mix your air mixture for example), but up to around 100 feet, which is pretty much all you need for recreational diving, it would be a great invention.
A secondary benefit of such a device is the lack of bubbles. (A benefit in military operations as well as any sort of diving where you want to get closer to the wildlife).
Well think about it, if fish could draw oxygen out of H20, you wouldn’t ever need to aerate a fishtank.
How much oxygen is dissolved in ocean water and is it enough alone to allow a person to breath? Would the device be efficient enough to draw the amount of oxygen a swimming adult is going to need?
Is it just me or does the link in the OP seem to confuse ‘air’ and ‘oxygen’? Granted, that maybe an issue with translation from hebrew.
The article doesn’t really say much about the technology.
The patent as presented in the article just says 'Ok to build this, get a couple of tubes, connect them to the magic air/water separator, then breathe away!"
It’s not clear to me how one could feasibly extract the dissolved air from water. I guess some kind of vacuum pump could pull dissolved gases out of water and pressurize it enough to be breathable. You’d need to do a lot of pumping to get a lungfull, though.
Or you could pump water across an artificial gill that exchanges CO2 for oxygen to the water. The gill would need a LOT of surface area though to exchange a lungfulls’ worth of air, and you’d never get a concentration above the dissolved oxygen level (going to be less that atmosphere), so you’d probably need another whole pressure pumping apparatus.
And even if you could, you’d need a pretty good flow of water to get an active human’s worth of airflow. Fish don’t really use up that much oxygen compared to us warm-bloods.
So it seems theoretically possible, but I’d be surprised if you can do it in a way that a human can carry around (especially including the power source). (Of course, I’ve been surprised before)
It sounds like a neat idea, but the battery pretty much kills it. We already have to run generators to compress the air, and I’m not sure that running a generator to produce electricity would cut down fuel at all.
As for the other advantage, if you don’t want bubbles, why not just use a rebreather? The important concept with a rebreather (that nobody has touched upon here) is that humans don’t ever consume all the oxygen from a breath of air. Hence, with a conventional SCUBA setup, you waste a lot of oxygen is wasted when you exhale. The rebreather captures this, scrubs out the carbon dioxide and passes it back to you. They can certainly go deeper than 10 feet – a quick Google search turns up models which can get you as deep as 130 feet.
However, rebreathers do remain in the realm of advanced diving, and are notoriously time consuming. If these ‘gill’ systems were easy to use, there could be a market for amateur divers who don’t want to scare off the fishes with their bubbles.
As for the form, granted – tanks are heavy, but that lost weight would only end up round people’s waists if they still want to sink. I do agree that the lack of bulk would be attractive. Problem is, you’d probably still want a back-up cylinder – and I’ve never seen a tiny one like that one in the diagram.
There are also other problems that people haven’t mentioned. It’s worth noting that we consume more air at deeper depths, though I’d assume that Henry’s law gets around that – provided that their really is the same proportion of ‘free air’ at any depth. A bigger problem is that you need to be able to provide enough air for two people. Diving safety procedures focus on staying close enough to someone else who can provide you with air.
For those reasons, I can’t imagine the product being used outside of shallow water diving. That said, there is plenty to see at those depths, and the idea is still extremely intriguing.