Oxygen sucking crystal

[dragon]

kind of cool

Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark say they’ve invented a crystal that pulls oxygen out of the air and even water. Apparently, just a spoonful of the stuff can suck up all the oxygen in a room.

The Oxygen-Absorbing Material.
U. of Southern Denmark
The crystal is a salt made from cobalt*, and it appears to be capable of holding oxygen at a concentration that is 160 times higher than the air we breathe. The paper notes that "an excess" of the substance would bind up to 99 percent of the oxygen in a room.

But what’s more remarkable is that the crystal can later release the oxygen when exposed to heat or low-oxygen conditions. In a press release, study author Christine McKenzie likens it to the hemoglobin in our blood, which uses iron to bind and release oxygen in the human body.

If the substance lives up to its promises, it could have a lot of really cool applications—for example, feeding high concentrations of oxygen into hydrogen fuel cells, and lightening the load for lung patients who have to lug around heavy oxygen supplies. Also, scuba divers could potentially leave their tanks at home, says McKenzie. “A few grains contain enough oxygen for one breath, and as the material can absorb oxygen from the water around the diver and supply the diver with it, the diver will not need to bring more than these few grains."

The study was published in Chemical Science.

*If you must know, the chemical name of the salt is written out as [{(bpbp)Co2II(NO3)}2(NH2bdc)](NO3)2 * 2H2O, where “bpbp” stands for 2,6-bis(N,N-bis(2-pyridylmethyl)-aminomethyl)-4-tert-butylphenolato, and “NH2bdc2” stands for 2-amino-1,4-benzenedicarboxylato). Don’t ask us how to pronounce all that.

link

[TOSDOC]

Also, scuba divers could potentially leave their tanks at home, says McKenzie. “A few grains contain enough oxygen for one breath, and as the material can absorb oxygen from the water around the diver and supply the diver with it, the diver will not need to bring more than these few grains."

Ummm, no.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_operating_depth

Oxygen toxicity is well documented at depth, which is why you need to mix it with other gases when diving. Such gases would always need to be carried or otherwise supplied to the diver externally, and hooking this up to a separate apparatus of crystals sounds more complicated and expensive right now than simply carrying it the way we do.

I can admire the other applications that may come about from such a substance, but it's statements like this that make me question the scientific credibility of finds such as these crystals.

EDIT: Fixed link

[Jub]

Also, scuba divers could potentially leave their tanks at home, says McKenzie. “A few grains contain enough oxygen for one breath, and as the material can absorb oxygen from the water around the diver and supply the diver with it, the diver will not need to bring more than these few grains."

Ummm, no.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximum_operating_depth

Oxygen toxicity is well documented at depth, which is why you need to mix it with other gases when diving. Such gases would always need to be carried or otherwise supplied to the diver externally, and hooking this up to a separate apparatus of crystals sounds more complicated and expensive right now than simply carrying it the way we do.

I can admire the other applications that may come about from such a substance, but it's statements like this that make me question the scientific credibility of finds such as these crystals.

EDIT: Fixed link

This could work for simple low depth dives to a shallow reef or something. If it can work in a simple way it would be great for a resort that would rather not store a bunch of bulky gear.

[Elheru Aran]

It would be one way to store oxygen for a underwater installation, rather than having to move around big tanks and such. Simply seal up a box of these crystals and drop it. All they would have to do is introduce the appropriate proportions of nitrogen and helium into the atmosphere and they'd be fine.

[Jub]

Could this have uses for underwater welding or anything like that?

[Elheru Aran]

Could this have uses for underwater welding or anything like that?

Potentially, although I'm not sure how it would be any more effective than the methods we already have. That's past my knowledge.

[TOSDOC]

This could work for simple low depth dives to a shallow reef or something. If it can work in a simple way it would be great for a resort that would rather not store a bunch of bulky gear.

I wouldn't want to own that resort. How would you keep people from going past a certain depth?

It would be one way to store oxygen for a underwater installation, rather than having to move around big tanks and such. Simply seal up a box of these crystals and drop it. All they would have to do is introduce the appropriate proportions of nitrogen and helium into the atmosphere and they'd be fine.

This is a much more attractive idea. I just wonder how efficient this stuff is at extracting oxygen from water--would it be enough to fill a tank for an underwater facility over time?

[Ralin]

I wouldn't want to own that resort. How would you keep people from going past a certain depth?

Require guests to sign away everything they own to the resort in the event that they die while diving.

[Ziggy Stardust]

How would you keep people from going past a certain depth?

How do they do it currently? I mean, if you ever go to a resort (or on a cruise, or a tour group, etc.) that offers scuba diving, it's not like they just slap a tank on you and give you free reign to do what you want wherever you want. Generally, you are told to stay within a specified area, and there will be an instructor/guide keeping an eye on you. And most scuba diving of the tourist variety will be in shallow reefs (in the Caribbean, for example) anyways. Not many tours take people to any appreciable depth anyway, because of the liability involved.

[TOSDOC]

Generally you're correct, Ziggy, although for most of the tourist dives I've been on in the Caribbean and all the ones in Hawaii, the average depth was 40-60 feet, with one in Maui beginning at a bottom depth of 89 feet. The wrecks in St. Kitts started in about 40 feet of water, while on a drift dive on a wall near Lanai we were allowed by the divemasters to vary our depth between 40 and 70 feet depending on your air consumption as long as we were in visual range of each other.

A single divemaster might have multiple divers at varying depths even when well within visual range. Now imagine the entire group on pure O2. Suddenly someone on your 4 o'clock is in an oxygen-induced seizure happening at just over a single atmosphere--even if the divemaster noticed them right away, he's still got to pay attention to them AND everyone else in the group. This could rapidly cause everyone to have a really bad day. Mixed air is safer--divers are trained to control and prevent conditions causing embolisms and narcosis, but can't control the direct effect pure oxygen at depth has on their lungs and central nervous system.

Here's another article. I love the part at the end where it says "don't overexert yourself".

http://www.alertdiver.com/Oxygen_Toxicity

[Beowulf]

I'd assume that it'd still be used in something like an closed circuit rebreather, not a dinky thing like from Star Wars. As such, you'd still have an inert gas being breathed in. You just have the oxygen being supplied through the crystals, not through a tank of compressed O2.

[Enigma]

Would these crystals be useful for firefighting? Throw a few grains and watch it suck the life out if the fire?

[madd0ct0r]

it releases oxygen when exposed to heat, so no, not that

[Starglider]

Such gases would always need to be carried or otherwise supplied to the diver externally, and hooking this up to a separate apparatus of crystals sounds more complicated and expensive right now than simply carrying it the way we do.

Rebreathers already work this way; CO2 is absorbed, nitrogen is recycled, oxygen is topped up from a compressed tank. It's a fairly well understood technology, even recreational divers use them these days, though still less safe than open circuit (due to the lack of an economical accurate CO2 sensor and the risk of getting the CO2 absorber powder wet). Storing oxygen more densely doesn't sound terribly helpful for rebreather diving though, because oxygen storage is not the limiting factor for rebreather dives; CO2 absorbtion and general diver endurance (in particular the staged ascent decompression times for any significant amount of bottom time) are.

[TOSDOC]

Rebreathers already work this way; CO2 is absorbed, nitrogen is recycled, oxygen is topped up from a compressed tank. It's a fairly well understood technology, even recreational divers use them these days, though still less safe than open circuit (due to the lack of an economical accurate CO2 sensor and the risk of getting the CO2 absorber powder wet). Storing oxygen more densely doesn't sound terribly helpful for rebreather diving though, because oxygen storage is not the limiting factor for rebreather dives; CO2 absorbtion and general diver endurance (in particular the staged ascent decompression times for any significant amount of bottom time) are.

Yes, but here you're relying on an external source for a vital component in your life support system. If you're operating in a medium in which you can't otherwise survive, would you rather rely on what you brought with you or what you have to extract from the environment?

[Enigma]

it releases oxygen when exposed to heat, so no, not that

Oops! Yeah... that would definitely be a bad idea.

[Purple]

That thing sounds like it would make for a wicked fuel additive for rocket engines and really anything you want to burn. Light fire, throw crystal in, lose eyebrows.

[Starglider]

Yes, but here you're relying on an external source for a vital component in your life support system. If you're operating in a medium in which you can't otherwise survive, would you rather rely on what you brought with you or what you have to extract from the environment?

For any single dive, anyone sane would prefer to rely on a bottle of oxygen, because a simple tank valve + pressure gauge is always going to be more reliable than any absorb/release system. The weight of the O2 bottle is not significant compared to the rest of the rebreather system, and it is vital to know /exactly/ how much oxygen you have left. Underwater habitats on the other hand have surface umbilicals and weeks of oxygen tankage; again CO2 removal is a bigger issue than oxygen supply. Nuclear submarines have been extracting oxygen via electrolysis for decades. So generally there is no obvious advantage over existing technology for underwater applications, certainly not one that would justify the R&D spend to commercialise it. For rocket fuel the ability to absorb and release oxygen is irrelevant, the relevant factors are mass efficiency (of oxygen vs binder), energy efficiency (disassociation reaction should be not too endothermic or ideally exothermic, like H2O2, though that tends to come with stability issues) and density (for packaging efficiency). Any kind of salt is going to be much worse on these metrics than existing fuels. Other space applications tend to use cryogenic LOX for maximum mass efficiency.

That leaves applications that need compact, lightweight, easily accessible oxygen storage but don't want to deal with the hassle of cryogenics.

[Beowulf]

AIP submarine usage would actually be a decent potential usage. Most of them require LOX at the moment, which limits the possible endurance below just the fuel endurance. It also takes up weight and space that could be better used.

Rocketry applications are nil though.