Nebie Rebreather Question

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Peter Bomberg

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I am looking at and Evolution rebreather, but was wondering can you use 2 tanks of nitrox instead of 1 tank of pure 02 and 1 of nitrox. I am looking to eliminate bubles not extend my dives. I am a pure warm water reef diver and do not like cold water diving.

Wondering can one use 2 regular 21% tanks or nitrox, as many of the places I go to have nothing more available and you can not take a filled tank on the plane.

Peter

PS. Semi novice diver 100+ dives and 6 years of diving.
 
No, that isn't gonna work. Why do you want eliminate bubbles?

If eliminating them in front of your mask will do get a twin hose reg where they come out the back.

I'm not aware of any CCR usng compressed air (21% O2 and 79% N2), and am not sure how you could make that work in the first place. CCRs only replace the O2 metabolized by the diver (hence need pure O2), and diluent (air, trimix or heliox, but not nitrox) to dilute the breathing gas when going deeper than 6 meters. The Evo is one of these, and the electronic controls won't work with air or premixed nitrox ... it's a $10,000 Nitrox mixing machine on your back. So you missing the point.

Several SCRs are available, such as the Dolphin, Azimuth and Submatix. All of them use Nitrox with at least 32% of O2 and more. They'll blow some bubbles in fairly regular intervals (hence semi closed).

All rebreathers blow bubbels when ascending, the gas in the loop needs to be vented just lke your BCD.
 
Peter,

CAveseeker7 is right, and I will not even pretend to know more than him. But, I will write a little bit more of a description as to why your idea isn't practical, and maybe you can get a better idea of your options.

The reason that Closed Circuit Rebreathers (such as the evolution) don't produce bubbles (most of the time) is that they are injecting pure oxygen into the breathing gas as your body uses it up - in essence "re-enriching" a small amount of "air" that you continuously breathe in and out. The CO2 produced by your body is removed from that "air" (more properly "gas") by trapping it in a chemical (scrubber) canister, so no bubbles are created in getting rid of CO2, either.

So, lets assume that you tried using Nitrox in both of the evolution rebreather's tanks. The first tank (diluent) is sometimes filled with nitrox... no problem there. When you begin breathing, the diluent tank is used to fill up the "breathing loop" (diver-to-scrubber-to-02 injector-to-diver) with nitrox and you begin breathing it.

As you descend, the breathing loop becomes compressed and loses volume just like air in your BC. Diluent (Nitrox in your case) is added to keep the breathing loop at a comfortable, breathable volume. (incidentally, this is why you would want a relatively low O2 nitrox for diluent. Because descending demands addition of diluent, so you could possibly end up adding too much oxygen to the loop - causing O2 levels to become toxic. No matter how smart the rebreather's computer might be, it can't add any low-O2 diluent if there isn't any onboard!)

Now at depth, you are breathing the loop and metabolizing the oxygen out of the nitrox breathing loop. The evolution's computer sees this, and triggers additions from its oxygen tank whenever needed. When you remain at a constant depth, diluent is not normally added, because oxygen is added as our body uses it. The loop volume remains almost perfectly constant.

BUT if the evolution thought it was injecting oxygen - which was in fact replaced with nitrox (let's say 40% O2 nitrox) it would have to inject more than 2.5 times as much gas to keep the loop O2 level up. Assuming that the computer didn't freak out from some safety feature (evo users might know) then the inert nitrogen being injected into the breathing loop along with the oxygen would cause the loop to expand, and you would need to dump some volume from it quite often. What you have done is created a very expensive Semi-Closed rebreather - with a seriously annoyed computer to boot!

If you want to dive nitrox and reduce the bubbles a lot, look into the semi-closed rebreathers. They use nitrox, and just let a little bit of it pass out of the loop as yo go along. They reduce the bubbles by 80 - 90% compared to open circuit scuba, and those bubbles come from behind you. They are also cheaper, and in many cases much simpler.

Search these forums for:
Draeger Dolphin
Azimuth (formerly Mares Azimuth)
RB80
 
This question is so odd that I think someone is trolling. The only reason I sucked a few lines out of my thumb is that I wanted to spare others. :wink:

I rather doubt the Vision electronics allow you to calibrate and run on two EAN mixes, simple as that.
 
Most SCR's experience a drop in FO2 in the breathing loop compared to the nitrox percentage being injected and this will run about 3-4% under normal workload conditions. So even with a suitable orifice, if you used air, the loop FO2 would be 17-18% at best. Anything below 16% gets problematic at shallow depths with any degree of exertion and I am unaware of any dive tables that are suitable for use with O2 percentages less than 21% so NDL/deco planning would get problematic. Consequently nearly all SCR's specify the use of Nitrox in the 32% to 60% range depending on desired depth and duration of the dive.

Some divers will expand the depth limit of an SCR a bit (to maybe 150 ft) by relying on the drop in the loop FO2 with 32% and/or by using slightly cooler Nitrox mixes to keep the PPO2 within limts, but care must be taken to keep the FO2 at or above 21% and in any event efficiency suffers at depth with the fixed orifices and flow rates.

But an SCR would potentially be more expedition freindly as only run of the mill nitrox 32 or 36 would be required rather than pure 02.
 
DA Aquamaster:
Some divers will expand the depth limit of an SCR a bit (to maybe 150 ft) by relying on the drop in the loop FO2 with 32% and/or by using slightly cooler Nitrox mixes to keep the PPO2 within limts, but care must be taken to keep the FO2 at or above 21% and in any event efficiency suffers at depth with the fixed orifices and flow rates.

.

Yes but we all know that practice is dangerous and foolhardy. The risk of spiking your po2 should you require a fush or even clear your mask you could tox out very easily.
 
Thanks everone, the question was not indended to be foolish. I have always wanted to get a rebreather for 1 reason, I love the wildlife (as my wife looks at my 600Gallon Saltwater reef tank and says sometimes she thinks I am more interested in the reef than the vacation). The purpose for the rebreather was to get colse enough, however I am not interested in deep diving (100-150ft max) and not able to get pure 02 in most places as I go to budget resorts for my diving. My favourite is Bali and Fiji and I could not even find nitrox in most areas. So I wanted to know if this was doable, however I know very little about rebreathers (only the concept). I will look at the SCR's and I thank everone for the input.

I understand the chemistry and why this would not work after reading the explination but it was worth a try, the cost is expensive but then I am a reef nut and if this worked then you never know.
 
Peter Bomberg:
Thanks everone, the question was not indended to be foolish. I have always wanted to get a rebreather for 1 reason, I love the wildlife (as my wife looks at my 600Gallon Saltwater reef tank and says sometimes she thinks I am more interested in the reef than the vacation). The purpose for the rebreather was to get colse enough, however I am not interested in deep diving (100-150ft max) and not able to get pure 02 in most places as I go to budget resorts for my diving. My favourite is Bali and Fiji and I could not even find nitrox in most areas. So I wanted to know if this was doable, however I know very little about rebreathers (only the concept). I will look at the SCR's and I thank everone for the input.

I understand the chemistry and why this would not work after reading the explination but it was worth a try, the cost is expensive but then I am a reef nut and if this worked then you never know.
I suggest you look here for info www.rebreatherworld.com there are about 600 members so far and they mosly all dive RBs so you will find good advice there.
 
Thanks for the link and yes I just went there, good site and good coverage
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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