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posted by martyb on Thursday September 06 2018, @11:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the krypton-ite dept.

Whales, seals, and other marine mammals seem to do alright in the chill waters of the arctic seas, so the US Navy is developing a type of "artificial blubber" to allow divers to work in freezing conditions for hours on end. Sponsored by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the collaboration between MIT and George Mason University uses an off-the-shelf wetsuit permeated with inert gases to triple a diver's resistance against the threat of hypothermia.

[...] The modification involves replacing the air trapped in the neoprene foam that provides heat insulation with heavy, inert gases, such as xenon and krypton, which make the neoprene act like fat-concentrating blubber. This is done by putting an ordinary neoprene suit into a bespoke pressure tank the size of a beer keg and pumping in the inert gases. After several hours, the gas permeates the suit, forcing the air out.

According to ONR, this makes the suit effective at 10° (50° C)[sic see note] for hours instead of minutes. The treatment isn't permanent as the gases leak out over 20 hours, but the team points out that this is much longer than the time divers spend in the water.

Why not recruit divers with more blubber?

[Note: This conversion error appeared in the original story; it should have read: 10°C (50° F). Story updated 20180907_011649 UTC --martyb]


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  • (Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Friday September 07 2018, @06:25PM

    by pvanhoof (4638) on Friday September 07 2018, @06:25PM (#731859) Homepage

    Scuba diver here (PADI Rescue Diver (1409EW7988)). A dry suit is far less agile during the dive than a wet suit is. Water does leak in from the neck if you move wrongly and/or blow too much or too little air into the suit. With too much air in the suit the air can also go to your feet resulting in you hanging upside down. When an enemy attacks you underwater you really want a wet suit rather than a dry suit. A wet suit dives much more easy. This is also why we, at PADI, won't allow you to dive with a Dry suit unless you had additional Dry suit training.

    An untrained diver diving in a dry suit will probably die that dive. Depends on what happens that the diver is not trained for to deal with.

    Scuba Pro nowadays has very nice so called neophrene drysuits [scubapro.com], called Everdry 4, that fit very tightly on your body. Those are drysuits that could perhaps be used for agile movements underwater. Sure. But not having to worry at all is probably still a lot better in military context.

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