Argon Bottles

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Rupert Vidion

Contributor
Messages
70
Reaction score
0
Location
United Kingdom
# of dives
100 - 199
Hi,

What size and material for argon suit inflation bottle? 0.85l Aluminium or 1l Steel?

What are the pros and cons of each? Does that extra 0.15l make a noticeable difference? Are the buoyancy characteristics of either better or worse? Is there a clear cut winner or is it pay your money, take your choice?

Rupert
 
Personally, I use a 6CF@3000PSI aluminum cylinder (which works out to about .82L@1BAR).

It's enough to get me through three relatively minor deco dives (i.e. on a 150 foot square profile I use about 1000PSI/2CF/60L). For dives with more ups and downs I'll add and dump more frequently, but obviously at less ambient pressure. Still seems to work out to about 3 dives per fill.

With bottles these small I doubt you'll notice any buoyancy effects. I don't.
 
Cheers, exactly what I was looking for.

Rupert
 
Probably too late to be useful, but I agree with Blackwood, and that's what my husband and I do as well.
 
Is the insulation value of argon, that much better then air? Is it worth it? Whats the cost of filling a 6cf tank of argon?
 
Is the insulation value of argon, that much better then air? Is it worth it? Whats the cost of filling a 6cf tank of argon?

I rarely use argon, but when diving helium having something other than backgas to fill your suit with is a good idea.

At my shop I think it's about 8 bucks for an argon fill.
 
Technically Argon gives about twice the insulation compared to air. Helium, on the other hand, is much less insulating than air, so it's more important to have an alternate inflation gas while trimix diving. Here are some numbers I found for heat conduction in gases. (higher conductivity is lower insulation)

Thermal conductivity (W/mK)
Air 0.024
Argon 0.016
Helium 0.142

However, a study I heard of* indicated that in order to get the full benefit you would have to fill and empty the suit half a dozen times to purge the air before diving.

Back to the original topic, Some of the divers around me prefer a larger tank so that they can transfil and still have sufficient volume at say, 2000psi. One in particular uses a 6cf or 13cf for inflation and has an al80 to fill them. It normally lasts him a season.

* Found it:
Nuckols ML, Giblo J, Wood-Putnam JL. Thermal Characteristics of Diving Garments When Using Argon as a Suit Inflation Gas. Proceedings of the Oceans 08 MTS/IEEE Quebec, Canada Meeting September 15-18, 2008.

http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/7962
 
Last edited:
However, a study I heard of indicated that in order to get the full benefit you would have to fill and empty the suit half a dozen times to purge the air before diving.

To get complete usage of it, yah, you'd have to have pure argon in the suit. But you can come close by jumping in with your valve open and letting hydrostatic pressure squeeze the air out of your suit. Others will bring a 40CF bottle of argon to fill/purge/fill again.
 
If you are getting your argon bottles filled at a shop that does a lot of this, what I am about to say won't matter at all. If you have more limited resources (as in my case), it might.

Right now I only have access to a single industrial sized argon bottle for fills. It comes filled at its rated fill pressure, a bit less than 2500 PSI. Having no booster, the best I can do with a 6 cubic foot 3000 PSI bottle is fill it a little over 80% full of argon, and that is only when the argon tank is brand new. Once the tank gets down to 1500 PSI (60% full), I will only be able to fill my argon bottle half full of argon. If I am going to go on a multiple dive trip that will last several days, I will have to top off the bottle with air, and before long I will be using more air than argon.

With such trips in mind, I just got a 13 cubic foot 2000 PSI bottle. When the source tank is relatively full, I will get 13 cubic feet of pure argon, enough to last a bunch of dives. When it's down to 1500 PSI, I will be able to get about 9 cubic feet of argon.

When my resources get better, I will be able to get better fills, but until then...

There was a thread a year or so ago that cited some study in which divers had trouble telling the difference between argon and air when diving, so it might not make that much difference. (I offer no opinion of my own.) I am sure, however, that people will be able to tell the difference between argon and a helium mix.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/
http://cavediveflorida.com/Rum_House.htm

Back
Top Bottom