A team of researchers at the University of Southern Denmark recently succeeded in synthesizing a molecule that can store oxygen at high concentrations and release it again when and where it is needed.
Professor Christine McKenzie and post-doctoral scholar Jonas Sundberg from the University’s physics department were able to make the molecule absorb large quantities of oxygen from the surrounding air and bind the oxygen. This is not that uncommon, as many other elements known to science bind oxygen; this is why wine will sometimes taste better once you have decanted it, as the molecules in the wine bind oxygen, which helps release the flavor. But this particular molecule is interesting in that it can bind oxygen in much larger quantities than other elements. In fact, a bucket filled with this molecule could store as much oxygen as you’d find in an entire living room. The molecule also does not react permanently with the oxygen, meaning that it can release the oxygen again later. The molecule, which is based on the element cobalt, could potentially be used as a very efficient oxygen storage unit, much like today’s oxygen tank but much, much smaller.
From a medical point of view, this could make many patients’ lives much easier, particularly those suffering from lung illnesses, by eliminating the need to carry around heavy oxygen tanks. And in a number of scientific fields, including experimental energy production, some reactions depend upon large quantities of available oxygen, more than can be easily stored conventionally.
Of course, as a scuba diver, our next question is: Could this technology make it possible to dive without a scuba tank? Can we, sometime in the future, stick an oxygen-storing molecule in our mouths and go diving, the molecule releasing the oxygen as we go? Is it time to sell the scuba tanks before they become completely obsolete?
The answer is a little more vague on usefulness for our sport. This is a very recent breakthrough, and the precise uses for this technology are still very much unknown. While the inventors foresee this new molecule as a replacement for medicinal oxygen tanks, scuba tanks are used under pressure, unlike medicinal ones. So if the molecule releases pure oxygen, there would be a problem with oxygen toxicity. Oxygen toxicity happens when we breathe oxygen under too high a partial pressure, which is a function of pressure and the oxygen percentage in the gas mix we’re breathing. For this reason, recreational scuba divers never dive on pure oxygen, as this would be problematic in even very shallow water.
But it is possible that one of these molecules could replace the oxygen tank in rebreather diving, or in other mixed-gas diving, where the pure oxygen is diluted with other gasses, such as nitrogen and/or helium. A small collection of molecules would weigh a lot less than a large oxygen tank, making this form of diving potentially much easier and more convenient. So if this new substance has the promise that the tests have shown so far, it may in fact influence our sport in quite a significant way. But don’t bid the scuba tank farewell just yet.
