Artificial Gills eliminate the need for SCUBA Tanks.

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Artificial Gills For Fun, Profit, Military Embarrassment and Planetary Survival

By Wayne German   May 12, 2005 (Revised May 25, 2010)

      The red and blue three-dimensional drawing represents a single solid thick flat sheet of Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMWPE) where x-ray lithography laser(s) burn an equal number of 50 nm diameter holes: 1) all the way through the sheet,  and 2) half way through the sheet.  The latter are designated in the drawing as the hole bottoms that are colored red.

What is left are blue “star towers” that stand above all else.  These star towers are hydrophobic so they repel water and cause the water to “bead” up on the surface through the action of surface tension -- without penetrating the rest of the material – even under considerable water pressure – and even when the pressures of the gases below the tops of the star towers are those encountered at sea level – or even a partial vacuum when used in conjunction with fuel cells.

Then at considerable depths, in a small “car” submarine, the gases beneath the tops of the star towers could be enriched in oxygen or depleted in carbon dioxide by passing water.  The stars would help to break up the boundary layers that would form to further aid the transfer of gases into and out of the water.  The other side of the flat sheet would be in contact with respiratory or fuel cell gases that would continually flow by.

The net effect of all of this is a method to support a long continuous “bubble” of either vacuum or sea level pressure air at great depths, so oxygen can be directly “inhaled” from the water, and carbon dioxide can be directly “exhaled” into the water – for divers and submarines alike -- even very small submarines.  Also, while I am not really serious, I couldn’t keep from adding the stuff below too:

Lighter-than-air wings with gondolas for passengers and cargo could be tethered to hydrofoils to make the most pleasant, most comfortable (no listing for passengers), fastest, and most efficient sailing craft of all.  But instead of using a gondola attached to a lighter-than-air wing, passengers could be propelled by the underwater of the tether in small “car like” submarines.  Inside the submarines the occupants could extract the oxygen they need directly from the water using this technique – and have their breathing gases scrubbed of carbon dioxide as well.  And the oxygen that could be obtained from the water could also be used in fuel cells inside the submarines – just like oxygen from the air can be used in fuel cells on land now.

  And a “car like” submarine could be used to sneak up on aircraft carriers and “bonk” them on the side to see how alert they really are.  For this purpose the submarines could be molded out of buoyancy compensated ice so sonar would just see them as “surprisingly fast” icebergs.  They would make no sound to indicate that they were being propelled and the lighter-than-air wing could be made out of transparent materials that would be hard to spot from a distance, much less when the weather is bad, and the tether could be made out of glass fibers that would be nearly transparent and very difficult to see coming.  While I am not really serious about this application it is interesting to consider.  (Part of me is so dastardly that I would like nothing better than to make the military die of embarrassment for being so totally vulnerable to such stupidity – even if it caused no real harm.  As far as the military is concerned, losing thousands of troops is nothing compared to really losing face and respect.)  And now for the really weird but possible:

Oceans cover twice as much surface of the earth as land, and there are no taxes to pay if you are based in the ocean and have Liberian Registry.  And oceans have considerable volume whereas the land has none.  In fact, in the event of global fallout due to nuclear weapons being discharged, or in the event that the next large asteroid hits planet earth in our life times, then the most hospitable place on earth might be just below the wave action on our oceans.  At those depths artificial gills like these could extract oxygen from the ocean and the ocean could scrub our breathing gases of carbon dioxide – for divers and small underwater cars (small submarines) as well.   (Propane and water under the influence of great heat and a catalytic agent can produce the hydrogen that would be necessary to burn with the oxygen that would now be obtained from the sea.  The reason that you would want to go to such depths and such an extent to avoid the surface is that any number of things might float on the surface, being less dense than water that would make it way too hot either in terms of radioactivity or ash to make it breathable and livable.  And this or other material would also accumulate on the bottom of the ocean also potentially being radioactive.  But between the surface waters, and the bottom, the oceans would prove to be a great filter where people could live.  The oxygen that had dissolved in the oceans for centuries might now prove to be one of the only sanctuaries on earth that would support life.

Lastly, living in the oceans under the polar ice caps might then prove to be the most hospitable places on earth.  The temperature would always be the same -- ever so slightly above freezing -- but never below, and yet by using heat pumps with special “Freon” they could capitalize on the difference in the temperatures below and above the polar ice caps and could generate heat and electricity indefinitely – and probably pay no taxes then either.  Now additional asteroids could just “bop” (a technical term) harmlessly into the miles of ice above -- in which case, having a “melt down” could come to mean an entirely different and rather harmless thing.

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