A device that lets you breathe underwater without the tanks?

[KangarooSeatbelt]

Originally Posted by chicnstu
I've seen in some movies and shows (Star Wars, Pokemon) these things that the people put in their mouth and they could breathe underwater while using them. I'm thinking that they work by filtering the oxygen from the water to you. If these exist, where can I get one?



I was doing some reading on the subject after watching The Abyss again... there's lots of posts on liquid breathing systems, you can find them with a quick search.

As for the using the o2 already in water, there is some research being done on the subject. I read about an israeli doctor who's developing a similar form of technology. (This may be fake, i didn't have time to verify). Supposedly, it's a type of mini centrifuge. THe idea is an application of Henry's law (gas disolving in liquid vs pressure). The centrifuge changes the pressure of the water it takes in from around the diver, and releases the air that is disolved in the water. according to the article i read, there is, even at deeper depths, something like at least 1.5% dissolved air in seawater, which is enough to satisfy small and big fish alike.
Maybe sometime soon we'll see some sort of apparatus to enable us to suppliment a small air tank with this water delivered o2, and prolong our divetimes... who knows.

Personally, I'm just looking forward to when they can surgically give me some gills. Like in water world. That would be friggin' sweet.

 

[miketsp]

Amazing how many posters are just too lazy to read a thread....

 

[KangarooSeatbelt]

Amazing how many posters are just too lazy to read a thread....

you caught me.... i suck.

 

[miketsp]

you caught me.... i suck.

You were not alone.

 

[hamelekim]

Sorry to bump and old thread, please don't be mad, but I thought I could add something interesting to the conversation...
An artificial Blood Cell created using nanotechonlogy. It has already been designed, just waiting for the technology to build it. It would allow for a person to be underwater for up to 4 hours, with no worry about decompression sickness. It's science fiction right now, but the foundation is in place to one day actually build it once technology has caught up, maybe in the next 20 years. If and when it happens I figure most people will have this done to their bodies at various percentages of artificial blood cells. it's useful for everything from fires to climbing mountains to scuba diving, even sports.
http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Respirocytes.html

Molecular manufacturing promises precise control of matter at the atomic and molecular level, allowing the construction of micron-scale machines comprised of nanometer-scale components. Medical nanomachines will be among the earliest applications. The artificial red blood cell or "respirocyte" proposed here is a bloodborne spherical 1-micron diamondoid 1000-atm pressure vessel with active pumping powered by endogenous serum glucose, able to deliver 236 times more oxygen to the tissues per unit volume than natural red cells and to manage carbonic acidity. An onboard nanocomputer and numerous chemical and pressure sensors enable complex device behaviors remotely reprogrammable by the physician via externally applied acoustic signals. Primary applications will include transfusable blood substitution; partial treatment for anemia, perinatal/neonatal and lung disorders; enhancement of cardiovascular/neurovascular procedures, tumor therapies and diagnostics; prevention of asphyxia; artificial breathing; and a variety of sports, veterinary, battlefield and other uses.

Respirocytes could serve as an in vivo SCUBA (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) device. With an augmentation dose or nanolung, the diver holds his breath for 0.2-4 hours, goes about his business underwater, then surfaces, hyperventilates for 6-12 minutes to recharge, and returns to work below. (Similar considerations apply in space exploration scenarios.)

Respirocytes can relieve the most dangerous hazard of deep sea diving -- decompression sickness ("the bends") or caisson disease, the formation of nitrogen bubbles in blood as a diver rises to the surface, from gas previously dissolved in the blood at higher pressure at greater depths. Safe decompression procedures normally require up to several hours. At full saturation, a human diver breathing pressurized air contains about ~(d - d0) x 1021 molecules N2, where d is diving depth in meters and d0 is the maximum safe diving depth for which decompression is not required, ~10 meters. A therapeutic dose of respirocytes reconfigured to absorb N2 instead of O2/CO2 could allow complete decompression of an N2-saturated human body from a depth of 26 meters (86 feet) in as little as 1 second, although in practice full relief will require ~60 sec approximating the circulation time of the blood. Each additional therapeutic dose relieves excess N2 accumulated from another 16 meters of depth. Since full saturation requires 6-24 hours at depth, normal decompression illness cases present tissues far from saturation, hence relief will normally be achieved with much smaller dosages. The same device can be used for temporary relief from nitrogen narcosis while diving, since N2 has an anesthetic effect beyond 100 feet of depth.

Direct water-breathing, even with the help of respirocytes, is problematic for several reasons: (1) Seawater contains at most one-thirtieth of the oxygen per lungful as air, so a person must breathe at least 30 times more lungfuls of water than air to absorb the same volume of respiratory oxygen; lungs full of water weigh nearly three times more than lungs full of air, so a person could hyperventilate water only about one-third as fast as the same volume of air. As a result, a water-breathing human can absorb at most 1%-10% of the oxygen needed to sustain life and physical activity. (2) Deep bodies of water may have low oxygen concentrations because oxygen is only slowly distributed by diffusion; in swamps or below the thermocline of lakes, circulation is poor and oxygen concentrations are low, a situation aggravated by the presence of any oxygen-consuming bottom dwellers or by oxidative processes involving bottom detritus, pollution, or algal growth. (3) Both the diving reflex and the presence of fluids in the larynx inhibit respiration and cause closure of the glottis, and inhaled waterborne microflora and microfauna such as protozoa, diatoms, dinoflagellates, zooplankton and larvae could establish (harmful) residence in lung tissue.

 

[lamont]

i want one.

(the Respirocyte thingy)

 

[KangarooSeatbelt]

That is pretty sweet... you are hereby excused for bringing the thread back up.

A consideration...
You'd still have to take a tank with you. It could be really small... just a few breaths would be sufficient I guess, and it would of course be dependent on how deep you went. As you descended deeper, your ear and lung spaces would still compress, and you'd have to equalize them by bringing in enough air to bring them to ambient. This could be achieved with the air in a held breath to a point... free divers do it, of course. But not everyone has that ability, and your average joe would need some extra air here and there to equalize. So you'd still have some deco issues, even though they'd probably be minimal or non-existant b/c of the minute amount of air you'd ongas.

Also I wonder what the physiological responses would be to holding your breath for four hours... would your body even let you do it? even though it didn't need the air? wouldn't you have to really train yourself to not subconciously take a breath? Interesting stuff....

Also, in tech diving, technically you'd need to carry enough air with you to be able to get out if you lost a breath, but again, a single small tank would be more than sufficient.

In any case, I hereby volunteer myself for the clinical studies...

 

[BKP]

Didn't marine boy chew aqua gum or something like that?

Don't know about marine boy, but my kids tell me Shark Boy just played with the sharks, and voila... instant underwater breathing (and he even scored Lava Girl!).

 

[Ice9]

I've one. I call it a snorkel

*cackles*

 

[RV]

the Respirocyte could be powered by eating body fat.. so pig out