No one makes geek-worthy dive gear quite like the Navy — and it looks like it’s at it again.

Scientists at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Panama City, Florida, have developed a prototype for a new deep-dive life-support system intended to conserve helium (a valuable resource), accelerate the deployment of Navy divers and increase safety.

John Camperman, principal investigator at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, says this is a significant step in saving up to 80 percent of gas during military diving operations, compared with the present system.

The current technology is a Fly-Away Mixed Gas System (FMGS), which delivers a gas mixture to divers through an umbilical cord to a demand-regulated, open-circuit scuba diving helmet. In this method, exhaled gas is released into the water, wasting a great amount of oxygen and helium.

The new rebreather system uses an umbilical-fed breathing loop that allows divers’ exhaled carbon dioxide to be “recycled” by returning back through the helmet instead of into the water. Rapid 3-D printing techniques were used to mold and cast the complex loop shapes that integrate the scuba diving helmet and rebreather.

“The new system modifies the current helmet and rebreather. Prototype analysis and testing have shown that drastic reduction in helium consumption is possible,” says Camperman. “Testing of the new prototype system indicates that the full range of FMGS diving is supportable within Navy life-support requirements, and that several life-support characteristics are improved, including extended emergency come-home gas duration.”

The new life-support system is a small step toward the Navy’s Initial Response Diving initiative, the goal of which is to support faster recovery of objects in deep waters. Examples of recovery efforts include aiding a disabled submarine, rescuing survivors of a capsize, or retrieving material after an accident before the ocean’s currents sweep it away. The IRD goal is to allow divers to perform work that requires human intervention to depths of 600 feet within 36 hours of being deployed.

Conserving helium is not the only cost-effective aspect of this new technology. With the FMGS system, transportation, support-vessel size and consumables (helium and other necessary gases) contribute to sizable costs. If implemented, the new system will lower overall costs because less helium will reduce the overall deck-space requirements. “[This technology] interfaces directly with the Navy-certified FMGS to save helium, without replacing the FMGS. Therefore it is a low-cost improvement for the Navy,” says Camperman. “There are other systems that approach 100 percent [helium] reclaim, but using one of them would require replacing the FMGS, at much greater cost to the Navy.”

Navy researchers are working on creating final prototypes to be ready for testing in December at the Navy’s Ocean Simulation Facility, where divers will wear and test the rebreathers.

For more information on this, and other news from the Navy, go to navy.mil/local/npc/

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