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>Posted on 21 Oct 1995 at 08:42:00 by Mark Caney >For several years now I have used chemical heat packs inside my drysuit for >very long/cold dives. They give off a fair amount of heat for several hours >at the surface. Underwater, my impression is that the higher the pO2, the >hotter and faster they burn, which would seem logical. For a given temperature I'd expect the chemical rate to depend on the concentrations alone. Liquids are for all(?) practical purposes incompressible so it seems improbable that the pack can run faster at depth. If indeed the pack does run faster due to pressure effects then one would expect similar bodily (chemical) functions and rates to speed up too. I am unaware of this being the case but this of course could be due to the body being good at selfregulating the internal rates. >I never tried them in an Argon environment but I'm sure they won't work. The Argon gas is external to the pack and has no effect on the pack except through *preventing* the heat from being transferred from the pack to the body. If the pack is not in good thermal contact with the body it will probably run it's course at an elevated temperature run out of steam a bit earlier than usual. john
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