What are your thoughts on that "New material (that) steals oxygen from air"

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!

Michael.52

Registered
Messages
23
Reaction score
1
Location
Israel
Hey, I've been seeing articles being shared and circulated around facebook with my science-liking, sea-liking, diving, and even general friends regarding a new discovery/synthesis of a type of crystalline substance, that has a very high (but also reversible) absorption capacity of Oxygen... most of these people throwing some pretty ridiculous comments on it, reflecting many twisted articles from popular news sites, and nothing really thought-through.

Heres an official article about it, from the original soruce.
and the (a?) scientific paper on it (needs log-in access, to read beyond the abstract).

I would like to share my initial remarks about it, and see what ideas and thoughts you have on it's potential, applications (regarding diving), and problems.

First off, I've seen many ridiculous articles draw a picture that "in the near future we'll be able to breath underwater without diving equipment".
This is stupid, since this crystal will have to be harnessed into some piece of equipment along with a entire system around it, in order to be of any use. So all it can do is lead to development of a new type of SCUBA equipment.
Another point I haven't seen addressed (darn..! I though at least my diving friends sharing these posts would have the capacity to point his at least) is that we can't breath pure Oxygen underwater beyond a few meters deep because of toxicity when above 1.6atm ppO2. So Oxygen from such a crystal would have to be accompanied by a diluent of some sort, and this will bring us back to a load of equipment that we already know...be it big tanks carried on one's back filled mainly with N2, or be it a CCR with the only difference being instead of an Oxygen tank (that already is quite compact) an entire new system for releasing the O2 from the crystal, which by the way (as far as I understood the article) is a thermal process, and will be much less simpler and much less reliable (not to mention, currently, also much less cheaper) than a simple bottle/tank of compressed Oxygen.

So, as I said these are just some thoughts I threw into words, phrased kind of as a rant on the topic. But don't get my wrong this does seem to me like a really cool invention, with many potential applications such as medical ones (as one of the researchers said), but I feel people are over-reacting about it's diving related aspects.

Would love to hear some more thoughts aside from my own, especially from people who have more/other knowledge than me in either the scientific or the diving fields.
 
Last edited:
I think the greatest potential is for getting pure O2 for my breather in remote locations.

I also read it will release the O2 into a near vacuum; so (in simplistic terms)

A) take a sheet of the stuff and wave it around to absorb O2

B) stuff said sheet into a vacuum canister

C) Apply suction to draw off O2

D) boost O2 into breather

E) fill Dil with regular compressor

F) go diving

Either that or doctor evil will build a mountain of it, cover it in glad wrap, and ransom the worlds governments with the threat of taking off the glad wrap and suffocating the earth <insert evil laugh here>
 
I don't see what's new about politicians, they've been stealing oxygen from the air for centuries.
 
I don't think I'll live long enough to see it happen. If I do it'll be too expensive for me to train for and buy. So ultimately I don't care.
 
Sounds interesting for O2 generation, but I'd rather see work being done on cross-species gill transplants.

I think this would have to be cheap to end users or very small and able to produce high o2 content on the fly to be of much value. We already have commonplace oxygen concentrators around the world.
 
Did not affect equipment sales, or fills. So I guess it will remain an interseting topic until further notice.....
 
We already have commonplace oxygen concentrators around the world.

I was being deliberately simplistic. It would just be another form of O2 concentrator, just instead of absorbing N2 into zeolite and venting it as waste, you would absorb O2 and then vent it as the end product. Depending on the viability of the process, mainly energy input vs gas produced per compression swing, it may be more or less efficient than the current O2 concentrators.
 
Cheaper helium would be fanatsic!
 
To the OP: You are probably correct in saying that a new "device" would have to be developed and carried by a diver. But so what? Why be so dismissive and negative about a brand new discovery? I would think every diver should be ecstatic about the possibilities. Are the details known? No, but is the future ever known? Maybe someone else will come up with an analogous method for extracting some of the large volume of soluble nitrogen in seawater and someone else will create a digitized mixer the size of a dime that gets its power from fin strokes and - presto - AIR at your desired mix.

Here is a little more about the process written for the layman.

My point is that if there is a problem there is also a solution, regardless of whether we know it or not. Out of the box thinking has benefits.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

Back
Top Bottom