Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] life support method?

[Chris Horne <chris@chrishorne.com>]

I think he's just trying to automate it so that he doesn't have to do it
himself- it takes care of itself; I tend to agree.

However, I've been doing some thinking and a little research on rebreathers. It
seems that basically the way a rebreather works is to use an absorbant (namely
Sonfalime, or whatever it's called) to absorb CO2 from the air, assuming that
most of us mortals breath in O2 and exhale CO2. Thinking about all of this has
led me to several questions:

1) Does the absorbant actually absorb CO2 and not return anything into the air?
2) If not, does it just grab off the carbon atom and return O2, but just not at
100% efficiency?
It seems that if it absorbed CO2 only, and we simply added a little O2 every
once in a while to compensate for the loss, then the system should stay
balanced- but is this true, given a 1atm environment? (I don't know- I'm asking)

3) Why does everybody watch partial pressures, and do we need to if the sub is a
1atm environment? I assume it has to do with percentages changing as the
pressure changes (in a typical diver/rebreather configuration), and thus they
cannot rely on just percentage of O2.
4) Can you get pure O2 from a consistent source without having to jump through
hoops?

-chris


Alec Smyth wrote:

>         Guys,
>
>         I can see the obvious merit of having an O2 sensor to know whether
> the air you are breathing is good or bad. But why is it necessary to have it