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There's Something Fishy About the Triton Oxygen Respirator

By erika - January 27, 2014

in Tech

Produced in collaboration with the Designers Accord in 2011, our Sustainability in 7 video series has aged quite well, if we say so ourselves. Perhaps the best example is Janine Benyus's short primer on biomimicry, in which the biologist, innovation consultant and author explains how the natural world can inspire and inform design.

Whether or not he's seen the video, Jeabyun Yeon definitely gets it: His Triton Oxygen Respirator concept was clearly inspired by fish. Just think of all the things we could accomplish if we somehow could sprout gills and swim great lengths without worrying about breathing?

We obtain many things from ocean. It becomes a great vacation spot and provides us with many resources. However, many difficulties are involved in using them, among which the most fundamental difficulty is breathing. To use skin scuba equipment, we must learn very complicated procedures. In addition, there are people that cannot enjoy them from being afraid to breathe under water. I've come up with a future product that can solve these difficulties.

Triton is made up of two main parts—a mouthpiece and two appendages that act jointly as the "gills" of the wearer. The user engages the gills simply by biting on the mouthpiece, activating a flow of compressed oxygen extracted from the water. Yeon, a student at the Samsung Art And Design Institute, notes that a fellow Korean has developed a filter that is too fine for H2O to pass through but will allow (smaller) oxygen molecules to do so.

The filtered oxygen is compressed into a small, powerful micro-compressor that is powered by a micro battery and stores it in a tank. "The micro battery is a next-generation technology with a size 30 times smaller than current battery that can quickly charge 1,000 times faster," Yeon says on his website, sans citation.

Given the ambiguity around these two crucial technologies, it remains to be seen as to whether or not the Triton will eventually allow us to finally expand our exploration of the water world around us. Meanwhile, the concept overlooks other obstacles besides respiration, such as the time it takes for an earthbound creature to resurface. When a person comes up after a deep dive, the body needs to decompress properly—the pressure inside of your body needs to equalize with the levels outside of your body, lest you risk getting the bends.

Before you get your hopes up and start planning your ocean floor world tour, consider this: The scuba diver that took on the world record deepest dive got down his deepest point of 1,800 feet in ten minutes. It took him eight hours and 49 minutes to resurface. So if you're looking to go for a deep dive with a mask like Triton in the future, you might need to cancel your dinner plans.

Here, if you were too lazy to click the link at the top, is Janine Benyus on biomimicry:

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B F

9 years ago

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As an engineer/Diver since 73, I would LOVE one of these units....except they are like one of my other wants...perpetual motion machine. Some people have gone into all sorts of analysis showing how many liters of this or that. But there is no reason to do that. When you breathe underwater you take in ONE FULL lung full of water per breath. This device would have to produce that for every breath since it does not have any way to save any of your exhale. You breathe about once every 4 seconds. How much water passes over those motorcycle handles in 4 seconds....close enough for extraction mind you? Next, you have to overcome the affinity of the gases to water...as in negative pressure creation. Your lungs will have to work damn hard for that and you will use far more O2 than you "create". Anyone who dives can tell you a hard draw on regulator will exhaust you rapidly. While the combination of these issues dooms success FOREVER, EACH one does as well. Not hough water contact, not enough O2 concentration to make a difference, not enough gas mass to fill the lungs, ...... TOTAL FRAUD

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Mark Bairsto

9 years ago

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respirators have great importance as you use them as a critical purpose of inhaling, so you must not compromise on its quality. WeeTect full face respirator visor (WFFRV) also names respirator face shield which is used in a full face respirator. It is an injection molding optical class 1 visor complaint with CE standard with anti fog coating and hard coating. http://bit.ly/20OKqqk

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Steve Clark

9 years ago

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Total bunk.
"Yeon, a student at the Samsung Art And Design Institute, notes that a fellow Korean has developed a filter that is too fine for H2O to pass through but will allow (smaller) oxygen molecules to do so."

Um, so H2O has a molecular mass of 18 and O2 has a molecular mass of 32 so no, this 'filter' would not work as described.
Then there's the fact that dissolved O2 in water will have a concentration of about 6ppm, where air is about 200,000ppm. One would need to filter the equivalent of ~34,000 lungfulls of water to pull out that many O2 molecules from the water.

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water

10 years ago

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Actually I think everyone is over thinking this concept. no one can say for a fact that this is an impossible concept. Think back to when the light bulb or even the first aircraft was invented. They also said no one would ever walk on the moon but we did that too. And there also going off of research on "know marine life" key word know, because we only discovered 10% of marine life. Who is to say there is one life for in the ocean that defies all logic. We as a species are ignorant to many things, and declare our selves as intelligent life forms. But the reason we declare ourselves intelligent is our ability to create the impossible. As a wise man once said impossibility is a delusion of the mind.
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Jnaejnae

10 years ago

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For every one saying "Pure oxygen is poisonous" what makes you think you are breathing pure oxygen while wearing that mask. Is states that a filter lets oxygen through because water molecules are too big. Last time I checked nitrogen and hydrogen are smaller than oxygen. If there is no nitrogen or hydrogen underwater then you are right.
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jojo

11 years ago

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redfood; isn't one hour better than none? Cause I can guarantee that you can't hold your breathe for an hour.
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CmEpps

11 years ago

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The four keys to inventing anything.
First, make something giant and simple that works.
Second, make it smaller and more efficient. Raise price.
Third, make it smaller and more efficient. Raise price even more.
Finally, make it more expensive and better looking.
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Robert

11 years ago

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One of the important aspects of breathing underwater is that your lungs cannot even expand to pull in air without the supplied air being under pressure that is adjusted for the ambient pressure of the water surrounding your lungs. Want to breathe through a long snorkel then you have to stay within a couple of feet of the surface of the water. The deeper you go, the more pressure you need for the air being pushed into your lungs. Thus you get saturated with the other elements of normal air. Thus the Bends if you do not decompress and rid yourself of the saturated gases. Pure oxygen under pressure above certain partial pressures in a volume of air can kill a diver. Pure oxygen should be avoided under diving conditions as a simple rule of survival. Look that up for a scary situation. Nitrox and mixed gas diving is reserved for technical divers and not meant for recreational use. It would be fantastic to have something this simple for diving but the hurdles for safe use when diving are enormous. Just the idea that a small battery could supply enough power to extract the oxygen and also pressurize it enough to expand your lungs at even 10 feet of depth is remarkably shortsighted. The air pressure for the diver from the 1st stage to the second stage regulator is 200 psi normally. I wish the inventors the absolute best in their work on this. A really great idea but a tough road ahead of it in reality.
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lange

11 years ago

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Pure oxygen can be poisonous at 1.6bar of partial pressure (US Navy limits) so that means 26m below sea level.. pure oxygen is actually standard procedure in first aid for many kinds of diving related injuries..

It's a funny concept however you will still need to get rid of all the carbondioxides you will build up if you re-use the same volume of air all the time.. and below certain depths the volume of air will be uncomfortably small for you to breath.
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Le Nez

11 years ago

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Last time I checked pure oxygen was poisonous to humans. Going to need to be able to filter out some nitrogen and/or helium to go with it!
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hojo

11 years ago

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usually, your nose is covered by the mask.
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Aaron

11 years ago

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What about your nose? Im no scuba diver but wouldnt you inhale water through your nose when you inhale through your mouth? Do you wear a clip or something over your nose? I cant shut off inhalation through my nose when breathing through my mouth.
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hojo

11 years ago

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Totally agree with Redfood. Designers need to work in collaboration with engineers so they can know when their concepts are completely impractical. Better yet, designers that ARE engineers. Now there's a force to be reckoned with.
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redfood

11 years ago

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From the wikipedia page on artificial gills:
"As with any artificial gill using dissolved oxygen, air from a huge volume[quantify] of seawater would have to be extracted to provide enough for breathing, requiring large amounts of power for pumping. Therefore, a key issue remaining is battery life. Currently, a 1-kg battery would only last for one hour."

"30 times smaller than current battery that can quickly charge 1,000 times faster" == "magic."

Its projects like these that make me dislike design concepts. Its easy to design "innovative" products when you assume nonexistent scientific breakthroughs or violate the laws of physics.
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Luis

11 years ago

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Nice concept, reminded me of that thing Jedis use to breathe underwater
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