Rebreather World - View Single Post - How a diving carbon dioxide absorber works article question

onetime · 28th November 2007, 19:58

Don't take these questions for me wanting to extend the life of absorbent in terms of reusing just trying to get a handle on efficiency/process of scrubbing.

When the absorbent in a scrubber canister is "spent", do you know how much of the absorbent material might still remain viable if the gas was flowing say in the opposite direction? (I may be assuming incorrectly here but I'm thinking that the gas passing through the scrubber will predominantly follow the same path on every pass through the scrubber with some faces of the sorb being hit with high CO2 regularly and some maybe not getting hit much at all).

Or does the absorbent react to the CO2 all the way through rather than just the surface area of the pellets?

I guess my thinking is that maybe reversing the flow of gas through the scrubber canister at some point in the dive might yield more "useable" sorb.

28th November 2007, 19:58	#7 (permalink)
onetime Classic KISSer #138 Current Rebreather/s: Classic Kiss Other Rebreather/s: Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: US, NJ Posts: 673	Re: How a diving carbon dioxide absorber works article question Don't take these questions for me wanting to extend the life of absorbent in terms of reusing just trying to get a handle on efficiency/process of scrubbing. When the absorbent in a scrubber canister is "spent", do you know how much of the absorbent material might still remain viable if the gas was flowing say in the opposite direction? (I may be assuming incorrectly here but I'm thinking that the gas passing through the scrubber will predominantly follow the same path on every pass through the scrubber with some faces of the sorb being hit with high CO2 regularly and some maybe not getting hit much at all). Or does the absorbent react to the CO2 all the way through rather than just the surface area of the pellets? I guess my thinking is that maybe reversing the flow of gas through the scrubber canister at some point in the dive might yield more "useable" sorb.
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