Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Oxygen, Energy and Propulsion

[Chris Nugent <dirkpitt77@yahoo.com>]

     Hey Anthony,

    The more experienced fellers in here will be able
to fill ya in on most of your questions, but I just
wanted to add my two cents on your mention of sensors.
 I found a pretty good lead on portable gas detection
and measurement equipment at enmet.com.  It's intended
for people who work in hazardous environments, and
some are small enough to be worn on your belt or
whatnot.  You can get them customized for whatever gas
you need.  This is probably what I'll be running in
mine.  I've only sketchy info on price, and if I
recall they're pretty pricey, but probably worth it as
compared to your life.

                               Nuge
--- TeslaTony@aol.com wrote:
> Recently I've been working on designing my own PSub,
> but am having a few 
> problems on a couple fronts:
> 
> 1. I want to be able to go under and stay under for
> a long time, and so far a 
> CO2 scrubber and a couple O2 tanks seem to be the
> best bet. However I can't 
> find any formulas on how much of what chemical I
> need for the scrubbers, how 
> much O2 will be needed for how long and what sensors
> should be used to detect 
> the O2 and CO2 levels.
> 
> 2. Energy: I know that a common system is a Diesel
> or Gasoline engine and 
> batteries or just straight batteries. But the
> typical Lead/Acid car batteries 
> leak when upside down, and in the event of some big
> emergency where the sub 
> is flooded and you have to get out the batteries may
> be flooded as well, 
> creating a major problem to you and surrounding
> marine life (not to mention 
> causing problems while the sub is being retrieved).
> The other battery choices 
> would be Gel-Cell (More expensive than Lead/Acid,
> but less dangerous), NiCad 
> (expensive, heavy and not much storage capacity),
> Lithium Ion (heavy, 
> expensive and may not come in the right size, but
> lots of power) and Plastic 
> (lighter than most batteries, but if I had enough
> money to get them I 
> wouldn't be asking you guys about all this stuff,
> I'd be hiring a 
> professional engineering firm to design everything
> for me).
>  Now this might sound crazy, but could there be an
> engine with an onboard O2 
> supply for it to burn? Or even crazier; Could you
> just give it "gills" to 
> "breath" the O2 in the surrounding water?
> 
> 3. Most PSubs seem to have a single propeller in the
> back of the sub, which 
> is one of the simpler systems (clockwise for
> forward, counterclockwise for 
> reverse doesn't get much simpler), but is fraught
> with its several problems 
> (entanglement is one, but also if the sub does a
> barrel roll in the wrong 
> direction can cause a loss of power).
>  I imagine many of you are also familiar with
> waterjets (like on ski boats) 
> and how efficient they are, especially at high
> speed. Now my question is; how 
> practical for a sub are they? Are they efficient
> enough to be used from 
> battery power? What about machining? Could an
> at-home shop make the parts or 
> be bought from an appropriate supplier cheaply? Are
> they reliable at all?
> 
> Thanks for the help,
> Anthony


=====
"Noisy outside, empty inside." - Confucius

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