Surgery – Respiratory method or device – Including body or head supported means covering user's scalp
Patent
1997-02-19
2000-10-31
Lewis, Aaron J.
Surgery
Respiratory method or device
Including body or head supported means covering user's scalp
12820121, B63C 1102
Patent
active
061386707
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention has for its object processes and installations for underwater diving employing a breathing mixture containing hydrogen.
The technical sector of the invention is the domain of industrial underwater diving for operations at medium and great depth.
One of the principal applications of the invention is the possibility of making dives from installations ensuring the immersion and pressurization of divers down to a certain depth beyond 50 meters, and allowing the divers to carry out a given work safely and efficiently down to at least 650 meters, thanks to the use of a ternary gaseous mixture called hydreliox containing at least helium, oxygen and hydrogen, then in returning said divers to surface atmospheric pressure after a decompression phase.
The possibility of breathing a gaseous mixture containing hydrogen has in fact been known since the end of last century, but experiments on human divers were really carried out with such a gas only from 1944; since that time, trials have continued episodically and discontinuously, forming the subject matter, in certain cases, of publications. Such trials have in fact been continued up to the present time only within the framework of research on the physiological effects of hydrogen on man and have not allowed real industrial applications due to the numerous risks run, by reason of the explosive characteristics of such a mixture, the difficulty in manipulating it during diving, and certain reactions of non-habituation of the divers.
Yet hydrogen presents a very great interest, particularly for medium- and deep-diving, as, correctly dosed in the breathing mixture, it considerably attenuates certain undesirable effects generated by the pressure. In particular, the reduction, and even the disappearance, of the high-pressure nervous syndrome demonstrated in 1968 by X. FRUCTUS, R. NAQUET and R. BRAUER, on the one hand, and the reduction in the density of the breathing mixture, on the other hand (hydrogen is two times less dense than helium), avoid the divers' performances degrading as the depth increases.
In fact, it is known to adapt the type of breathing gas as a function of the depth of immersion, such as, generally: air, nitrox mixture (N.sub.2, O.sub.2), trimix mixture (He, N.sub.2, O.sub.2) and heliox mixture (He, O.sub.2), but, despite the use of such synthetic mixtures, the divers undergo the effects of the hydrostatic pressure and of the non-metabolized gases (helium, nitrogen), as well as those associated with the increase in the density of the gas breathed under pressure. These various effects cause: together various neurological, articular, digestive syndromes which reduce the divers' efficency; due to the increase in the density of the breathing mixture, all the higher as the molecular weight thereof is high, considerably reduce the divers' work capacity.
The experiments set forth hereinbefore, as described in the publications essentially intended for professionals and scientists, such as those of the UHMS (Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society) Publication reference No. 69 of Jan. 3, 1987 and entitled "Hydrogen as a diving gas" edited by Ralph W. BRAUER, and of the compilation of texts selected by this Undersea Medical Society in 1983, grouping together and entitled "Key documents of the biomedical aspects of deep sea diving" from 1608 (sic) to 1982, and some others, have made it possible to determine certain criteria of limit of use of gas mixtures containing at least hydrogen and oxygen at the same time, the latter being necessary for the divers to breathe: a risk of narcosis beyond 2.5 MPa of partial hydrogen pressure was noted in particular.
It has been envisaged fairly recently to add hydrogen in the basic binary mixture, well known and used industrially for numerous years and which, called heliox, is a mixture of helium and oxygen: in this way, a ternary mixture is obtained, mentioned hereinabove when presenting one of the principal applications of the invention, called hydreliox, which, during tests made in zones of depth accessibl
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Delauze Henri
Gardette Bernard
Gortan Claude
Compagnie Maritime D' Expertises-Comex
Lewis Aaron J.
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