Gas, for the most part, should stay inside of a closed circuit rebreather- that’s sort of the entire point. So leak testing is very important- important enough to automate to get really good data. Unlike reading a gauge with your eyes, automated data capture, if done right, can make it easier to capture a lot of data, and it takes out errors caused by a person interpreting an analog gauge face. I also wanted to add temperature measurement, as that seemed likely to cause pressure deviation, even to the point that the pressure in the volume under test seemed to go up.

Test Setup

Automated data logging is nice since it is much less tedious and usually allows for a lot more data and more data sources to be reliably sampled. In this case, I didn’t have a lot of bench space to dedicate to this, and the sampling rate was low, and I wanted to use stuff I already owned. So I ended up using an arduino as the “data collector”, a MAX31850 as the temperature sensor, and a the dwyer 605-20 as the pressure sensor.

I think the most annoying part of this is the pressure sensor- its just not really meant for this application, as its powered at a somewhat high voltage (10-35 VDC) and outputs 4-20 mA (current, not voltage) across the span of 0-20″ of water. While measuring the current is possible, and even possible to automate with some of my gear, it would take up a good amount of space, and it not really necessary.

Of course, since the pressure sensor basically becomes a current source, it is possible to stick a resistor in there to create a voltage drop. The resistor can’t be too big (requiring too much current) and making it too small will mean there is not a large enough voltage drop. I managed to find a 200 ohm resistor in my junk pile, which turned out to work well:

Output Voltage:
.02 A * 200 ohms = 4 V
.004A * 200 ohms = .8 V
Max Power Dissipation:
200 ohms * (.02 A)^2 = .08 W

According to the datasheet, 200 ohms and running at 15 V would work fine for the pressure sensor, so I had to pull out a power supply. It seems weird that I could turn the voltage up to 35V and still have the pressure sensor work fine and output the same voltage, but I guess that is the magic of it being a current source.

Sample Data

Here we have 15 minutes of data- it was being recorded every 1 minute. As you can see, the pressure dropped about 1 inch of water over that time period, with little change in temperature. Since I have a differential pressure gauge, changes in barometric pressure should be zeroed out. So we can finally observe a leak! Given a rough volume of 13 liters (stated volume of drybag), and a nominal room temperature, it comes out to about 30 ml of gas lost over 15 minutes.

How Good is Good Enough?

People say that if you can measure it, you can change it. That might be true, but making something completely leak proof is more or less impossible- just keep looking and you can find a leak at some pressure or with some penetrant (like helium, a very small gas!). It’s important to know when something is good enough!

EN-14143 is a European standard for rebreathers, so lets look there for some leak rate and pressure information.

5.6.5 Exhaust valve
The apparatus shall have an exhaust valve, operated automatically by excess gas in the breathing circuit.
The exhaust valve shall prevent the pressure in the breathing circuit exceeding 40 mbar.
Testing shall be done in accordance with 6.5.3.1 after the test according to 6.5.3.2.
The operation of the exhaust valve shall not be degraded or leaking after being subjected to
a) a constant flow of 300 l min-1 for a period of 1 min;
b) a static negative pressure of 80 mbar for a period of 10 s (when in the wetted condition).
The leakage of the exhaust valve (when in the wetted condition) shall not exceed 0,5 ml (STP) min-1 when
tested with a negative pressure of 7 mbar for at least one minute.

from EN-14143 which I found somewhere online. Emphasis mine

According to this, the maximum pressure the device should experience is 40mbar across the counterlung. Anything greater should be vented by the overpressure valve. Additionally, it looks like .5ml/min of leakage at 7mbar (2.8″ water) is permitted. At a higher pressure of 15″ water, it seems like the leak rate is about 2ml/min. This is encouraging since this is the leak rate for the whole system, at a much higher pressure. However, it still merits a test around 3″ of water.

Another analysis would be to consider gas supply vs leakage, since there is not a lot of gas in this rebreather. Assuming a worst case leak rate of 2ml/min, for a 30 minute dive an additional 60ml of oxygen would be lost. As a person requires somewhere around 500ml-1000ml of oxygen per minute, this seems like a very small amount to loose- less than a minute of dive time.

Overall I am surprised and pleased with the leak rate, and with an automated setup, it should be easy to take a look at this whenever I want, or across different devices and iterations. Fortunately, it looks like I might not need to do much to reduce leak rate.

The counterlung is a pretty important part of a rebreather- for the design I am pursuing, it is doubly so- not only is it a single counterlung, providing both buoyancy and breathing gas, but it houses the scrubber canister. In addition to housing the scrubber, gas addition and gas dump are located on the counterlung.

Obviously, water should be kept out of the counterlung, and gas should be prevented from escaping the counterlung. There are some qualitative tests that can be done to tell if something is leaking- spraying it with soapy water to see bubbles, or holding the counterlung underwater can show if gas is coming out. Or, the counterlung could be filled with water and I could look for water leaking out. However, both of these tests require careful observation and it is not always easy to see where the leak is coming from- for examples bubbles or water can leak from one area, get trapped, and appear to come from somewhere else. Its also hard to quantify how bad a small leak is. For a rebreather, there should be no bubbles at all.

For a more sensitive and quantitative assessment of leakage, a pressure decay test can be used. This is easier than measuring extremely low gas flow rates. The concept and execution are simple- fill the counterlung up to a pressure, and observe it the pressure goes down. This gives you an idea of how leaky something is, and its used on everything from respirator masks to space craft parts. The leak decay is much better than pressing the bag by hand, since the test can be preformed at the operating pressure of the bag. Ideally, its never more than ~20″ of water, from roughly the mask of the user to the bottom of the counterlung. Not coincidentally, 16″ of water is 40 millibar, and is the EN-14143 specification for the cracking pressure of the overpressure valve.

Here is the pressure gauge I’m using. Its a transmitting gauge, which means at some point I’ll hook it up to some kind of data acquisition device to get some time series data, but for the moment I am just reading off the gauge face. It is also extremely sensitive- each division is .018 PSI or ~125 pascals.

To give an idea of the sensitivity of the gauge, I was pleased and surprised that it can indicate a change in pressure when the sealing bar on the bottom loads the walls of the bag (by lifting the bar with my hand, it takes the weight off the fabric structure). This is important because hopefully the leak is very small and very slow.

Issues with data collection

There are a few issues with collecting good data. One is that temperature plays a huge role in pressure, and so a room full of windows and a struggling AC (temperature fluctuation) and storms rolling in and out (air pressure fluctuation), its hard to measure a small pressure differential. I have actually seen the pressure go up, which is the opposite of what you would expect in a leak decay test.

To resolve this, I might do one of two things- either test during a calm night when the solar effects and weather effects are minimized, or add a temperature sensor and automatic data logging to try to correct for the temperature swings.

Another annoying detail is that my hose is a hair too small, and sometimes it starts to slip off the very delicate barbs (which occasionally snap). So I may need to characterize the leak of these barb connections to make sure I don’t accidentally characterize that leak as the leak of my system, if the leak is significantly large.

Preliminary Results

Two important things were done- first, qualitative submersion test to look for gross leaks. A few were identified around the sealing bar, which is by far the sketchiest seal. The leak always occurred right in the middle of the bar, where the seam from the bag was. Replacing the hand-tightened nuts with nyloc nuts and cranking down with a socket solved this issue.

I also ran a few leak decay tests, which turned up the aforementioned pressure problems. However, the pressure did hold for a few hours at only seemingly a loss of a few inches of water, which seems acceptable but I think further testing will be important to do.

At this point this rebreather has been dived “wet” four times and it seems like a good time to make some notes on how it preforms. It certainly seems adequate-to-usable as an underwater breathing device, and as of the latest dive, I have even achieved a semblance of neutral buoyancy.

Dive Procedure

This is not a definitive “How to dive an O2 rebreather” manual. This is how I dive my scary prototype rebreather, usually alone, and unsupervised. I have no formal training and you shouldn’t use this as a basis for any kind of diving. That said, here is what I do to dive this thing:

The first step is to assemble the unit, including packing the scrubber. The scrubber should be filled with an appropriate amount of sorb appropriate for the dive (or more). As previously discussed, its about 4″ per cylinder of oxygen, for this given scrubber. The sorb should be shaken to allow to settle, and then the screen and spinner (see drawings) should be screwed on tight. At the end of this step, the oxygen should very slowly and very carefully be turned on, but not injected into the system yet.

The second step is a 3 minute pre-breathe. The goal of the pre breathe is to ensure that all systems, such as the MAV and regulator, are operational, and to warm up the scrubber. After putting on a dive mask, suck all the air out of the couterlungs and exhale it through the nose into the atmosphere. I exhale completely through the nose to empty the lungs, then start to fill the counterlungs and inhale. This ensures that there is minimal nitrogen in the system. Having too much nitrogen could cause a loss of consciousness if the mix goes hypoxic (hilariously unlikely with an O2 rebreather). Excess nitrogen could also allow nitrogen loading (leading to the bends). At the end of the pre-breathe, have a buddy or use a mirror to check the canister for condensation and for warmth. Condensation and warmth indicate that the CO2 scrubbing reaction is proceeding in the absorbent.

The third step is a bubble check. Divers should descend to 2-3 feet under the water and check each other (or use a mirror) to check for bubbles coming out of the unit- there should not be any. Bubbles coming from the unit call for an immediate abort- its not a rebreather anymore, its open circuit!

If the bubble check is negative for bubbles, the dive can proceed for up to 10 minutes (or other gas/scrubber limits). It is recommended to terminate the dive after 10 minutes since there is no convenient way to see how much gas is left (no SPG). This does not take into account chronic oxygen exposure toxicity of O2 at depth, but it is difficult to run up the O2 clock in only 10 minutes.

Once back on the surface, the DSV should be switched to the surface position and the diver can come off the loop.

Buoyancy

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Buoyancy has been a challenge with this unit, but only because I am improperly weighted, since I only have one 10lb weight. The unit itself is about neutral to negatively buoyant in fresh water, and I am about neutral to negative in seawater (even with a partially inflated lungs). This leaves the wetsuit and a few liters of air to be balanced out by the weights- way less than 10lbs.

On open circuit, this additional weight can be balanced with a sac of air that the diver can fill and empty (a buoyancy control device). The remaining net small amount of positive or negative buoyancy is trimmed out by modulating breathing. Deep breaths and spending more time with more lung volume increases buoyancy, and the opposite decreases it.

With a rebreather, this is completely useless, since breathing out simply moves the gas to the counterlungs, which are still attached to the body. So the whole loop volume is what needs to be trimmed against the rest of net buoyancy of the diver, which, in this case, is very negative with 10lbs of weight.

However, it is still less than the volume of the counterlungs, so it is possible (as seen above) to achieve neutral buoyancy!

Trim

Trim has not been a big issue so far. Folding up my legs moves my center of mass close to the center of buoyancy, so I don’t have much trouble staying horizontal in a nice streamlined position. This might need more investigation, since I have not dived it in particularly calm water yet, and most of my time has been spent swimming, which helps keep a good trim.

Attitude and Work of Breathing

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Work of breathing (WOB) is a big figure of merit for rebreather design. Work of breathing depends on counterlung (CL) position, and for any given rebreather the CL position changes as the diver moves around. In particular, pitching and rolling change the pressure of the lungs vs the counterlungs. I don’t have a way of measuring WOB, but it has been breathable through 90 degree rolls to either side, and about 30 degrees of pitching up. Pitching down tends to result in incurable mask squeeze, since the nose essentially makes the mask the lowest connected air volume. It is much more comfortable to avoid that, unless you really want to look at something in a deep hole. On another note (often echoed by rebreather divers), I have not had any issues with dry mouth or feeling “thirsty” during my dives, since the air is quite warm and humid when breathed- even in the chilly waters of the northeast.

Ergonomics

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A couple easy, but substantial improvements could be made to the harness. It is very inconvenient to put on, involving an intricate dance of bending over and weaving the harness behind your back, while balancing the unit on your shoulders. Bolting it to a backplate or having seprate waist and hip connections (maybe even a chest strap) would make it much easier to don, and easier to tighten to prevent it from floating around underwater.

Additionally, it would be helpful to be able to clip off the MAV so that it lives somewhere on the users chest, enabling either hand to find and use it.

On the bright side, the hoses are fairly non-intrusive when diving, even though they are somewhat long, and even thought the unit is wide, it does not impede any movements to the front of the body, which is where the arms usually are while diving.

Cleaning and Storage

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The unit is pretty small, and since most parts are plastic andhave no moving parts, it doesn’t require a huge production for cleaning. Everything just goes into the storage bin, gets rinsed, and then is set in the storage bin to dry. The two exceptions are the MAV and the Oxygen valve- the MAV gets soaked, and the oxygen valve gets soaked, while worked open and closed. These soaks happen with hoses installed, since I want to prevent the inside surfaces from getting salt/salt crystals inside of them.

Final Thoughts

This thing is pretty darn fun, and not as sketchy as I imagined it would be. It really does let you get a lot closer to fish and animals. I’d love to take it somewhere shallow and calm and clear, like blue heron bridge or crash boat beach, or a nice warm lake somewhere.