VooDooGasMan
Contributor
Try Ebay and also vintage diving, alot of collectors have magazines, then look for vintage dive museums.
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Cryogenic applications are used overseas, but only for source supply chain & storage for non-immediate use.That was definitely an issue. The article mentions a 6-day boil off for their X5 model. The earlier article show images of filling rigs off a larger Dewar on the back of a pickup so it would not be that big a problem for a small group of divers or a charter boat to buy bulk liquid for a week or so of diving.
Given the cost and complexity of some cave and wreck projects, I can see how the cryogenic rigs could be attractive. Most anywhere on the continental US coastline would not be a problem. It would be usable for remote dive sites like the South Pacific or Indian Ocean where gas plants were not nearby.
Given that the boiling point of oxygen is 90 Kelvin and nitrogen is 77 Kelvin, I would have thought that a cryogenic mixture of 21% oxygen and 79% nitrogen would lead to the following dive: first the oxygen boils off ...
That is an easy fix - dive two tanks, one O2 and one N2, and mix them on the fly.
I am not certain that it is possible to indefinitely store LN2 and LO2 at ambient temperatures. While this is possible at increased pressure with some gases (e.g., liquefied petroleum gas), it may not work with LN2 and LO2. If it were possible to indefinitely store LN2 and LO2 at ambient temperatures this would likely require tanks that are rated far in excess of 3000 psi and bring in the headache of new DOT approvals.
The system seems to be rapidly growing in complexity - it might just be that a rebreather is easier, cheaper, and less prone to failure.
Cryogenic applications are used overseas, but only for source supply chain & storage for non-immediate use.
The dive ops at the Truk Stop Hotel obtains condensed quantities of helium & oxygen by having more shipped in bulk by larger cryogenic liquid container pressure cylinders at the same cost .... The delivered liquid helium & oxygen is then vaporized and stored conventionally for later use blending mix in regular Scuba tanks. . .
Completely unrelated and sorry to derail, but anybody know how I could procure a copy of that article in Time magazine. Jim Woodberry was my father-in-law.
1967 What Ever Happened to Liquid Air?
It could have been the wave of the future; the dawn of a new era in diving. It was lightweight, compact, carried a six- to eight-hour air supply, was easy to use, and as of the printing of this article in June 1967, seemed relatively safe. Cryogenics had been used in research laboratories, aerospace and medicine, so why not scuba? This was what prompted Jim Woodberry to invent the liquid air scuba device, which was made up of a pair of Dewar tanks to hold and insulate the liquid air and a system of pipes, valves, warming coils and tubing that transformed the liquid air to breathable air. The systems estimated cost was about $300 to the diver, but dive shops would have to invest around $9,000. Was it the investment of money or imagination that put the freeze on cryogenic scuba?