Purge Procedures and Leak Testing for the Morgan Breathing System (MBS) 2000 Closed-Circuit Oxygen Rebreather
Abstract
The MBS 2000 is a closed-circuit oxygen rebreather designed to provide oxygen for on-scene decompression of submarine survivors and recompression treatment of divers aboard submarines. There are concerns in each of these applications about having enough oxygen to support remote operations and having sufficient ventilation capacity to prevent excess O2 leaking into the compartment. For the Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle, which cannot be ventilated, the concern is the rate at which the mid- and aft-sphere O2 concentrations will rise. Since purging accounts for most of the O2 used when breathing on the MBS 2000, optimizing the purge procedure will maximize the duration of the O2 supply and minimize oxygen leaks into the chamber atmosphere. Therefore the overall goal of the present study was to develop efficient purge procedures and determine leak rates for the current version of the MBS 2000. This was accomplished via three experiments. The first experiment focused on identifying the optimum purge procedure. The second experiment used the optimum purge procedure from Experiment 1 to determine mask leak rates and the build up of O2 in the chamber in clean-shaven and unshaven subjects. The final experiment evaluated two design modifications to the MBS 2000 and the effectiveness of these modifications for reducing the purge volume. The specific objectives for the three phases are given below.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 30, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA441197
Entities
People
- David Fothergill
Organizations
- Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory