Argon in your dry suit?
- Thread starter swimmer_spe
- Start date
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
dreamdive
Contributor
mmadiver
Contributor
dreamdive
Contributor
mmadiver
Contributor
Its called superficial ICD and results in the Skin bends...
From wikipedia
Superficial ICD occurs when the inert gas breathed by the diver diffuses more slowly into the body than the inert gas surrounding the body.
An example of this would be breathing air in an heliox environment. The helium in the heliox diffuses into the skin quickly, while the nitrogen diffuses more slowly from the capillaries to the skin and out of the body. The resulting effect generates supersaturation in certain sites of the superficial tissues and the formation of inert gas bubbles.
dreamdive
Contributor
Yep, mmadiver, you are correct.
Found this article: http://www.plongeesout.com/articles...n/lambertsen/isobaric gas counterdifusion.pdf
Perhaps the reason why we don't see it in our group is because 1. we don't do Helium saturation dives and 2.if we use our rich mix for some of the inflation, we also inflate with our 50%. The He content is thus fairly low.
Although we rarely use Argon, this gives new food for thought.
Thank you for bringing this up. I will need to research this more.
Claudia
Found this article: http://www.plongeesout.com/articles...n/lambertsen/isobaric gas counterdifusion.pdf
Perhaps the reason why we don't see it in our group is because 1. we don't do Helium saturation dives and 2.if we use our rich mix for some of the inflation, we also inflate with our 50%. The He content is thus fairly low.
Although we rarely use Argon, this gives new food for thought.
Thank you for bringing this up. I will need to research this more.
Claudia
mmadiver
Contributor
Even with a minimal amount of helium in your suit it is still possible to get skin bends. People have been afflicted by it from ambient helium in recompression chambers while breathing air/nitrox mixture by mask. Hopefully one of the sat. Dudes on the board will jump in here and lend some more insight.
Though it is all moot as the fix is simple- don't put helium in your suit and you don't have to worry about it.
One of the main reasons that Argon is so much less effective an insulator than you would expect from the thermal conductivity numbers is perspiration. Humidity inside the suit builds regardless of the underwear used or workload. Obviously, perspiration in liquid form against the skin makes it far worse.
No. All the bell dives I was involved in were full saturation using hot water suits. With one exception, HeO2 was the breathing mix and chamber atmosphere. I did one shallow sat with a HeO2 chamber atmosphere and air in the water, but still in hot water suits.
Now that you mention it, I have never heard of skin or CNS hits in sat (past very early experiments). The few hits in sat I have seen or heard of were all joints.
I have read about some deep bell bounce dives in the very early days that used air to compress the bell. The bellman and diver were breathing HeO2 and/or Trimix, but that was before my time Hannes Kellers 1000' dive in 1962 being the most notable.
Similar threads
