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From: Brent Evers (no email)
Date: Thu Sep 06 2001 - 19:41:51 EDT
>Never, repeat, NEVER use a compressor like this to provide breathing
>air, especially for use under water with SCUBA. Carbon monoxide is a
>common constituent of the output and under pressure is much more
>dangerous. CO toxicity rapidly increases with depth and can easily
>overcome the breather at even shallow depths. For breathing use all air
>should be compressed by a breathable air compressor, using only a non
>mineral oil for lubrication. You will become a diving fatality if you
>persist.
I'm not goping to advocate using a cheap sears compressor as totally safe
for diving, but I think that this is BS. Assuming the intake is clean,
there should be no CO in the mix - this is especially true if the compressor
is oil-less. Half the cheap hookah systems on the market are nothing more
than this.
I've reseached (semi-extensively) ways to build an on-board diving
compressor - downloaded loads of information of hospital filters, hookahs
and the like, talked with dive shops and fire departments about their
systems and to say that the only compressor that can be used is a breathing
air dive compressor is garbage.
A clean input (no CO) and filtered output for any oil blow-by should be more
than sufficient for low pressure (100lbs) air delivered for breathing air.
Hell - I've seen well-established professional divers using cheap
compressors with a cheap water filter mounted on the output - and they
breath from it day-in-day-out. This is by no means an ideal system, but
spare me the "only good air is scuba shop air" rhetoric.
You're comment regarding mineral oil lubricants is a good one though. Any
suggestions for a good replacement oil in a hookah?
Brent
Baba 35
Vogelsang
Vallejo, CA
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