semi-rebreather

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ronski101

Contributor
Messages
472
Reaction score
35
Location
redondo beach, calif
# of dives
500 - 999
I have always wondered why someone has not come up with a system that allows a diver to breath the same air twice before it is exhaled. This would allow us to use half sized tanks and no O2 tank with the same bottom time and half the bubbles. Also it would not cost thousands like the rebreather systems presently on the market. If i recall, a person only uses about 17% of the O2 in a breath leaving 83% remaining. Some kind of expanding bag possibly with scrubber chemical in it for the CO2. Cycle: breath in from tank, breath out into expanding bag, breath in from expanded bag, breath out into water, repeat.....guess i am dreaming huh?
 
that would be called an SCR and have been commercially available for decades, and typically get 3x the time out of the same size bottles. Kiss GEM, Hollis Explorer, Dolphin, etc etc. The only thing you can remove from a CCR is the electronics and potentially sensors, but you still have to design a closed system with scrubber, counterlung, one way valves, etc etc
 
As far as I know, the US Navy's Experimental Diving Unit developed the first SCCR to save Helium in their Mark V Helium Hat in the 1930s. It was a bronze canister for Baralyme and a venturi attached to a standard Mark V. It was first used during the recovery of the Squalus.

Back-mounted units with corrugated hoses and breathing bags were developed in the 1950s through the 1970s. With the possible exception of some experimental units, none had O2 sensors or electronics.
 
Way back in the day, they used to teach bag breathing as a potential emergency ascent technique. The idea was that an OOA diver could exhale that last breath into the BC and then breathe from the BC for several breaths on the way up.

CO2 levels would come up, but you wouldn't be on the system long, and it was arguably better than having nothing to breathe at all, as the CO2 levels with just the gas in your lungs would spike even faster. It fell out of favor very quickly, in part due to the need to keep the inside of the BC sanitized like rebreather divers do now with their counter lungs. The average recreational diver sucked at that, and lung infections were a real possibility in training and if practicing the technique.

What you're proposing is basically the same thing, but with a counter lung that dumped half the gas from the loop with every breath, and relying on that alone, or perhaps with some scrubbing to keep the CO2 levels in check.

The RB80 rebreather does something very similar, although it dumps only 1/8th of the total gas in the loop with each breath and uses a scrubber to keep CO2 levels low - but it's the same basic idea.

A significant advantage of the system is that if the gas feed to the loop fails, the loop volume continually decreases, and the lack of a full breath is the cue for the diver to bail out to OC. You'd have that same advantage in spades with a SCR that dumped half the loop volume with every breath.

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The problem with the Drager rebreathers like the Dolphin, Ray and Atlantis, is that the lower the O2 content of the gas used, the larger the orifice that has to be installed and the faster you use up the limited gas supply.

For example, with a Dolphin using the 32% orifice, a 27 cu ft tank of 32% Nitrox lasted about 45 minutes. If you used a higher oxygen percentage gas mix you could install a smaller orifice, with a lower flow rate, and get longer bottom times.

But that design limitation really limited the Drager rebreathers for deeper dives, and you either had to add larger tanks on the sides, or you had to modify it with another orifice to add O2 to the loop, and then add some form of loop monitoring to convert it to a fairly simplistic manual CCR rebreather - one without much redundancy.

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With any SCR, the PPO2 in the loop is lower than the PPO2 of the drive gas itself, as the divers uses some of the O2 from the gas in the loop. The average divers uses about 4% of the O2 available in each breath so if you're diving 32%, you're exhaling gas around 28% O2, and if you breathed it again, you' be exhaling 24%. If you were exhaling it into the loop, and half the loop were dumped each breath, with that volume being replaced with 32%, you'd be breathing gas around 30% oxygen.


The question is whether a 2X gas extension is sufficient to warrant the counter lung and the greater complexity, and CO2 levels might be a problem. Most current SCRs extend the gas about 3x but elevated CO2 levels come into the picture and you need a scrubber.
 
The RB80 rebreather does something very similar, although it dumps only 1/8th of the total gas in the loop with each breath and uses a scrubber to keep CO2 levels low - but it's the same basic idea.

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With any SCR, the PPO2 in the loop is lower than the PPO2 of the drive gas itself, as the divers uses some of the O2 from the gas in the loop. The average divers uses about 4% of the O2 available in each breath so if you're diving 32%, you're exhaling gas around 28% O2, and if you breathed it again, you' be exhaling 24%. If you were exhaling it into the loop, and half the loop were dumped each breath, with that volume being replaced with 32%, you'd be breathing gas around 30% oxygen.

pSCRs with high extension ratios (like the rb80's 10:1) really drop the po2 a lot in the shallows. For instance, if the gas you're using to "drive" the rebreather is 32%, it becomes totally hypoxic on the surface with a po2 of .075. That's some serious **** and it can kill you if you're not on top of things.
 
The problem with the Drager rebreathers like the Dolphin, Ray and Atlantis, is that the lower the O2 content of the gas used, the larger the orifice that has to be installed and the faster you use up the limited gas supply.

For example, with a Dolphin using the 32% orifice, a 27 cu ft tank of 32% Nitrox lasted about 45 minutes. If you used a higher oxygen percentage gas mix you could install a smaller orifice, with a lower flow rate, and get longer bottom times.

But that design limitation really limited the Drager rebreathers for deeper dives, and you either had to add larger tanks on the sides, or you had to modify it with another orifice to add O2 to the loop, and then add some form of loop monitoring to convert it to a fairly simplistic manual CCR rebreather - one without much redundancy.
I thought the Drager was designed for recreational dive only. But I have seen some with much bigger tank or even converted as CCR.
Haven't used one for a very long time.
 
my question was not the technical aspects of such a system but why it had not caught on with all the seemingly obvious benefits.
 
Price is a big factor for most folks on top of the attention they require, maintenance, and extra work to dive. Rebreathers are a great tool, but will probably be a while before they are main stream. The popularity of them is growing though.
 
I thought the Drager was designed for recreational dive only. But I have seen some with much bigger tank or even converted as CCR.
Haven't used one for a very long time.

It was designed for recreational diving only and 32% was as low as you could go on the gas percentage, with jets available for 32%, 40%, 50% and 60% in the US and an 80% jet sold in Europe. The problem was that the flow rate with 32% was so high that it really limited the gas time on a multilevel recreational dive. The 1/2 canister fill option was very popular as the average diver wasn't getting more than about 90 minutes on a two tank boat trip anyway.

Way back in the day it was not unheard of to strap a pair of AL 30s on the sides of the case and plumb them into a manifold block to double the gas capacity.

It was also not unheard of to convert the dosage unit and add a manual addition valve to convert it to an mCCR. That's still done with Dolphins today, particularly with KISS parts, and there are some aftermarket options to use 3 O2 sensors and a fisher ported computer rather than relying on an Oxygauge.
 

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