Quote: (Originally Posted by
Pacman)
Sorry but roughly 60 secs response time and 200mA supply current are quite
unacceptable.
The first one because if breaktrough reached you could be almost dead after such time.
The second one because of battery capacity unless you would like to carry a speleo light battery pack to supply the reb.
My two cents
Pacman
The Deep Life CO2 sensor that is fitted to the commercial rebreathers and is proven in underwater trials on rebreathers, has a 150ms response, but power consumption is an issue: to handle that we switch it on once every 10s, for 0.5s, then off again. It is 38mm x 20mm, and protected from moisture using heat from the scrubber stick, and by a hydrophobic membrane: it is sufficient. We have not had a single instance of losing a CO2 sensor due to moisture.
On the solid gel and heated wire type CO2 sensors, none of these that we tested worked in helium.
Alex