Extendair better for flood recovery?

Drmike

saw this on the Titan website


Trying to work out if/why this is true.

Would the structure of the cartridge speed up or make more efficient the water removal after flooding? Would it be easier to 'restart' as they put it a cartridge over sorb? less caustic coctail as no dust? anyone flooded a extendair before?


thinking if this is true of it might be good to use it in a bob.

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caveseeker7

Mike, if you search in the Optima threads they did the flood recovery thing.
All relative of course, unless it's bad DSV protocol you'll need to fix the leak first.
And submerging the sensors isn't high up on the 'recommended by manufacturer' list either I believe ...
The dust issue is true though, there is hardly any at all.
That and the ease of use are the two major advantages.

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AD_ward9

It is true, though I understand Micropore do not advertise this as it could encourage irresponsible behaviour.

The reason is the CaOH is very well fixed in the plastic matrix in the EAC, but in granules it is in a base that falls apart in water.

With sorb, within 30 seconds of it being wet, it has given up enough of its active components to increase the pH of the water from 7 to 13. With an EAC, there is almost no change in 30 seconds, and it takes over 30 minutes to get to 13. This means that so long as the flood does not last more than 5 to 10 minutes, you can flush it out and it still keeps running.

The EAC restarts very quickly indeed.

Alex

Drmike

Thanks for the data Alex.

Very interesting.

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decoweenie

How much does this plastic matrix inhibit the interaction between the gas and the sorb material ?

One would think that by having a plastic material surrounding the sorb, that would happen. Thus the reason why it takes a longer period of time for water to react with the sorb.

If it does inhibit the interaction, then should it be a less efficient ?

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diverklondike

Couple quick items...

1) Micropore has several patents on their process because of the "benifits of their technology" matrix etc... Highlevel information can be found on their website...

ExtendAir



2) From personal experiance I can state that I would much rather be dealing with a flooded loop with a Micropore Cartridge over a scrubber full of sorb. Alex's last comments pretty much says it all...


Dive Safe.... Mark

jaap

Just a minor thing, there is no such thing as CaOH. I guess its a typo and you either refer to the bulk of the scrubbing material being Ca(OH)2 or the strong base NaOH or KOH.

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Jordan

Yes, I have (in a swimming pool). The unit was flooded for about 5 minutes before I cleared it (this is also when I was forced to learn how to properly do a dil flush). The water inside the loop definitely tasted bad but not so bad that I couldn't swallow it -- I did swallow a mouthful of the slightly caustic water before I knew how to dil flush and it wasn't pleasant but it went down. After I finally cleared the unit (probably took a full 45 seconds or a minute to get it clear), I was able to keep on breathing the Rebreather with just a slight taste of zing.

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AD_ward9

You are quite right. I blame innate laziness when I first get up, before the coffee.

After careful testing of the effects of a flood, we concluded that cutting a section from an EAC and dumping it into your hot tea, then putting it on your tongue, was safe. It is now part of my regular EAC demo I do with customers who have not experienced EACs. I then drink the tea. I would never dream of doing that with sorb.

Incidentally, here is a typical CO2 breakthrough test result using a 125mm diameter cartridge with the large central bore. This is run under the EN14143:2003 conditions, i.e. 1.6l/min of CO2 at 4C ambient, heliox humidified to > 80%, heliox temp on exit from breathing machine is 32C. The 5% ceiling is the ceiling of the CO2 sensor. Time is in seconds x 10^4, so over 5 hours is achievable from a cartridge, reducing to 4+ hours at depth. The firmness of the wrap and how it is sealed is an important factor too.

The scrubber life you get depends very heavily on the canister design: the worst case we are aware of is a fifth the performance from a badly designed canister. Not reduced by a fifth, reduced to a fifth. Good analysis and canister characterisation are critical to EAC performance.

Cheers

Alex

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trob09

Unless that scrubber is a Cis can...