carlislere:
If so, what do you think of the products?
I've tried it in a Dolphin once.
WOB was fine as Dolphins go, the ease of handling can't be beat. Open cannister, insert cartridge, close cannister. Done. No slow filling, no dust, no tapping. Those are the advantages, especially the lack of dust as it makes the cartridge more resistant to caustic cocktails when you develop a leak.
The downside are the high expense and short duration (which again raises the price/hour). You need to get a replacement cannister that retails for $350. Most people around here use Sodasorb, so I can compare the price to that. I don't know what it would be for Dräger's DiveSorb. But the price of the replacement cannister buys you 3 buckets of Sodasorb, each one good for 7 stock Dräger cannister fills. If you stay at Dräger's consevative scrubber rating of three hours the 21 fills add up to 63 hours of diving ... :11:
And that's just the admission for the use of cartridges.
So far no testing data has been made available to the public, even though the cartridges are used in Dolphins, Azis, Inspirations and at least one Meg. At both DEMA '02 and '03 the company promised testing would be finished soon and available to the public. In conversations the reps keep insisting the cartridges are good for 4 hrs, but will only rate them at 2hrs in writing. And even for that number they didn't disclose any of the relevant test parameters (depth, temperature and CO2 production). So two hours it is, at least in my book, which is 2/3 of what you get from granular absorbant.
A box of 4 retails at$76, giving you 8 hrs dive time. That's $19 per fill and $9.50 per hour. Compare that to the before mentioned Sodasorb. A 37 lbs bucket retails for $90, enough for 7 fills. That's $12.85 per fill and $4.29/hr based on the 3 hrs rating.
So unless the convenience of handling the cartridge is of very high value for you, or money is not an objective in your life, the cartridges don't make a lot of sense. Not at the current price and usefull life, anyway.
If they ever come up with independent testing data for the various applications that show a longer cartridge duration the equations will change in favor of the cartridges. If they increase production and reduce the price it'll be the same.
Both would make them a feasible replacement for granules.