Triton Scuba Mask Transforms Divers into Human Fish

Please don't do this.

The key point is how much oxygen you actually consume out of every breath, so the numbers would be significantly less than that. But you raise a salient point- the outline shows this to be essentially an osmotic form of oxygen transfer from the water, so you're never going to get 100% transfer; it could also be very dangerous for use when exploring caves or other areas of limited volumes!!

Not to mention, it says nothing whatsoever about getting rid of the CO2 produced. Forget AGW, this is where CO2 is a direct threat to human health. Where's Kramarat when you need him?

Actually the 250 - 500 mg is how much the typical person absorbs per breath.

I did my homework.

Very few small lakes have anywhere near the 10 mg/L and some are less than 1 mg/L. A lot will depend on temperature and the trophic state. So depending on the lake you want to use the device, your oxygen availability limitation may be seriously hampered. GA.

I just went by average levels but yea I recall some of that technical info from my scuba diving classes from a number of years ago.

Most actively flowing bodies of water range between 5 and 15 mg/l depending on temperature, season and flow rates but seeing lower than 1 mg/l is entirely possible in many standing ponds with low to no refreshing water flow.

My rough guess to make such a device functional for a person would require a unit nearly the size of a semi truck using several tens of KW's of power to run the pumps and related compressors.

To be honest just using off the shelf electrolysis to split the oxygen right out of the water would be a far more realistically practical system.

From your explanation, it looks like this idea is impossible.

But how do fish do it? Do they simply use way less oxygen and are gills extreemly efficient?

I think that the respiration (tidal volume) is 500 ml of air per breath. Suppose that I am right, and that a diver would require 30 breaths per minute, that's 15 L of air per minute or, at 21%, 3 L of oxygen per minute at the surface.

This may simply be an adaptation of the old fashioned oxygen re-breather. Such devices have proved deadly and a dive depth should not exceed 30 feet. They were once popular with the likes of navy seals - no bubbles - closed system.

Ignoring lung efficiency 3 L per min = 0.1 cfm. At 30 ft. max the pressure is 1 bar - I think that's 30 psia?

Suppose that the compressor cuts in at 30 psia and cuts out at 40 psia. I'm guessing that's about 10 Watts. Some energy would be required to pull the oxygen through the molecular sieve so double that to 20 Watts. Assume an 18 Volt battery. As long as you don't mind your clientele dying of oxygen poisoning...

What do you think?

Sort of yes.

The moving the oxygen gas energy requirements are not all that high. It's the volumes of water that have to go through the filtering system to get those small volumes of oxygen that add up so fast.

Sending hundreds of gallons of ordinary pond water though atomic filters every minute takes a huge amount of filter area plus energy. That's the problem.

For example using reverse osmosis to clean seawater into clean water take about 1 KWh per cubic meter (~264 gallons) so doing that at a flow rate of 500 GPM would take some 120 KW's of power. Now take that down to atomic level filtering to separate the free oxygen atoms from the water atoms plus all the other stuff in the water and that power consumption and filter size goes way higher.

That's where my rough numbers were coming from.

Somebody watched too many Bond films as a kid.

"extract oxygen from the water and deliver breathable air". Where does the other 80% of the "air" volume come from?

I see no provision for re-breathing the air.

"compressed and stored in a miniature storage tank"

"easily rechargeable microbattery."

Really? Where's that compressor?

This device, if indeed it could deliver enough oxygen to a swimmer, probably is not selective in the type of gas being passed through. Neither are gills. Water does not just dissolve oxygen from the air, but also has a similar solubility of nitrogen. You will not see oxygen enrichment to any appreciable extent with this device at any rate of "air" delivery. Also, some oxygen depleted waters will still be saturated with respect to nitrogen since this is unreactive to most forms of life. Carbon dioxide would be super-saturated with respect to outside water, and should be transferred outward during the exhale.

I also tend to agree with the other posters here that it seems unlikely the device would actually deliver enough usable oxygen to keep a swimmer supplied while submerged. This could only be considered for a best case scenario (as an escape device???) where the water is known to be well oxygenated. Not for use in caverns, certain lakes, etc.

Just quoting the obviously contradictory, uninformed author.