Mailing List Archive

Mailing List: techdiver

Banner Advert

Message Display

From: "C. Randy Bohrer" <underwaterapplications@co*.co*>
Date: Sat, 2 May 1998 13:09:27 EDT
Subject: Re: Hydrox
To: techdiver@aquanaut.com
Aw, don't worry about none that O2 and H2 cleaning nonsense. That's just for
obsessive strokes and dive store owners who want to make an extra buck. No one
has ever been hurt by any of this stuff we're all so afraid of (oxygen,
hydrogen, gasoline, propane, natural gas, etc.). This stuff has never caused a
fire, so you can throw together some old fill whips that aren't good enough to
use on your air system, order up some O2 and H2 fittings, call the gas supplier
and have at it! As far as decompression tables go, just use the DCIEM tables
and multiply the stop times by 1.5, unless your breathing oxygen, then multiply
by 0.5. When you get to ten feet, flip four coins at the same time every
minute, when they turn out to be heads, come up!

Have Fun,
C. Randy Bohrer
Underwater Applications Corp



Some guys (one of which is a customer) wrote:

Also, just mixing the Hydrox must be a task - you 
have to make sure that while you are mixing, the FO2 never climbs above 4%.
I guess you'd fill the Hydrogen first, then add
the O2 in tiny squirts from a Haskell, tumbling
and mixing between squirts.  No thanks, not inmy back yard.
Then there's the whole question of decompression
schedules.  They don't have to be all that accurate
in sat diving, because they spend days off-gassing
anyway, and if someone starts to feel bent, they arealready in a chamber.  
For bounce diving, I don't think there are any reliable data on 
deco schedules, and I sure as hell wouldn't want to try it.  
Helium, which is much better known from a decompression standpoint,
is tricky enough below 375 ft or so using compartment-basedmodels.
Heliox is mostly only used for work-of-breathing 
reasons at extreme depths, and Helium is a better-known
choice for any dive a bounce diver could perform.-Will
On Thu, 30 Apr 1998, Wrolf Courtney wrote:
> By popular request, I got my information on Hydrox from> > Mixed Gas Diving
> Tom Mount & Brett Gilliam> Watersport Books> ISBN 0-922769-41-9
> Published 1993 by Watersport Publishing, Inc.> 
> You could try getting this from Amazon.com: Mixed Gas Diving> 
> The correct percentage at which hydrogen - oxygen mixtures become explosive
is 4% O2.  This gives it a minimim operating depth of about 100 fsw.> 
> As well as the travel gas (e.g. air) to reach 100fsw, if diving scuba, a
transition gas of, say Nitrox 4 is needed.  Otherwise while switching from the
travel gas to the Hydrox 4, the mixture in the diver's lungs would exceed 4%
O2, potentially leading to an explosion.> 
> All told, it doesn't look useful for scuba applications.  In saturation
diving, if the habitat is at or below 100fsw with an appropriate gas, there
would be no need for a separate transition or travel gas.> 
--
Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'.
Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.

Navigate by Author: [Previous] [Next] [Author Search Index]
Navigate by Subject: [Previous] [Next] [Subject Search Index]

[Send Reply] [Send Message with New Topic]

[Search Selection] [Mailing List Home] [Home]