New Nanomaterial Takes the Stink Out of Submarine Air

HK_User · Jul 19, 2018

SUBMARINES

Seawolf1090 · Jul 19, 2018

Y'all are why we Tincans carried ASROC.

HK_User · Jul 19, 2018

Seawolf1090 said: ↑

Y'all are why we Tincans carried ASROC.
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And we had a few things that kept your Captain awake at night.

ghrit · Jul 19, 2018

Seawolf1090 said: ↑

Y'all are why we Tincans carried ASROC.
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Sure, but first you gotta find the boat.

Oddcaliber · Jul 19, 2018

ghrit said: ↑

Sure, but first you gotta find the boat.
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The Russian boat's were easy to find! Ours not so much but we still find them.

Seawolf1090 · Jul 20, 2018

Y'all would be surprised how good our sonar was. That was in the early 1980s. I expect the current pigboats are a mite quieter. Subs vs. ASW ships is always a game of oneupmanship. Subs get stealthier, ASW sensors get more sensitive. Weapons on both sides get better.
Current German diesel boats have gotten very steathy too.

ghrit · Jul 20, 2018

Oddcaliber said: ↑

The Russian boat's were easy to find! Ours not so much but we still find them.
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Sound deadening wasn't Russia's strong point, for sure. We could tell what the cooks were doing. Back then, the ONLY way surface craft found us was if we told them where we were going to be, they then had to hold us. Not to be too arrogant about it, but it took a matter of minutes to lose them once they locked on. ("Locks" weren't too awful secure back then. I would not be the least surprised to find them less pickable these days.)

HK_User · Jul 20, 2018

Submarines, the silent service.

Seawolf1090 · Jul 20, 2018

Subs go down. They don't always come back up.
But they could avoid much of the surface weather. On my ASW frigate in the early 1980s, our new Captain, a young Commander wanting to prove himself, took us into a hurricane while tracking "Ivan", a Soviet sub. The sub was scooting around some seamounts down below. At one point my shop rolled on her side from a big wave. We should have lost many topside things - gun turret, radars, mack (mast/stack in a single tower), etc. as a means to lose topside weight and right the ship. We righted from to 90° roll but lost nothing. I know we were on our side, as I woke up while sleeping in the radar compartment, and literally stood on the hatch in the wall! Opening the hatch, I looked down into my ET office, furniture and other stuff all tumbled about. We then slowly righted, as I did a Gene Kelly - stepping off the wall back onto the deck.
We were lucky, we should have sunk. That Russian sub crew had to be laughing their butts off at us.
The Captain finally let Ivan go and we got out of the hurricane. That was quite a ride.

ghrit · Jul 20, 2018

Seawolf1090 said: ↑

Subs go down. They don't always come back up.
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Too true. Surface ships do NOT resurface without a lot of help after the first dive. More's the pity in both cases.

HK_User · Jul 20, 2018

Run Silent, Run Deep

Cruisin Sloth · Jul 21, 2018

HK_User said: ↑

New Nanomaterial Takes the Stink Out of Submarine Air

Desperate for a breath of fresh air.
David C. Duncan/US Navy
On a US Navy submarine, every breath you inhale has been repeatedly exhaled from the mouths of about 120 other people. This isn't as suffocating, or gross, as it sounds, because submarines have ventilation systems that take the CO2 out of the air, and recirculate it with chemically catalyzed oxygen.

I take that back, the air is gross, because the chemical used to remove CO2 smells like old diesel mixed with a dash of sulphur, and it permeates everything on board. This chemical, called amine, is known by every submariner (I was one for 3 years), as well as every submariner's wife, husband, or anyone else who encounters that sailor's laundry. However, a new CO2-capturing nanomaterial could bring an end to this most notorious of submarine smells (trust me, there are others).

This is how the CO2-binding molecules coat the sand grain's pores. Look at 'em there, sucking up all that CO2!

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Unlike amine, which is a liquid, the new material looks like sand. In fact, it is sand, except it is covered with tiny pores, each filled with molecules that selectively pull CO2 out of the airstream. Together, sand grain and molecule are called Self Assembled Monolayers on Mesoporous Supports, or SAMMS. The pores create nooks and crannies that let even a small amount of the material soak up an incredible amount of CO2—a teaspoon of the material has slightly less surface area than a football field. And it's reversible. "With a slight amount of heat, you can also open that molecule back up and release the CO2, making it possible to use the same material over and over again," said Ken Rappe, an engineer at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who worked on SAMMS.

There are many different types of SAMMS, each designed to bind with a specific molecule. They were originally engineered to pull mercury and other contaminants out of industrial waste streams, Rappe says. The CO2-binding version was identified by accident over a decade ago, when a scientist accidentally dropped a sample of the stuff in a glass of water. The sample started fizzing. Some experiments showed that this fizzing was the water dissolving stored carbon. At the time, carbon capture and storage wasn't a huge research interest (besides, SAMMS likes its CO2 cool, and coal power emissions or automobile exhausts are too hot to capture), and the researchers searched for an application before a colleague pointed them to the problem of funky sub air.

Amine doesn't just stink, it's also highly corrosive and will ruin anything not made of stainless steel. This makes it a huge maintenance burden, as it needs to be flushed and moved into storage whenever it gets saturated with CO2. The sandy SAMMS would alleviate this, as it doesn't need special storage. "When you go from a liquid to a solid, you're able to get rid of all the pumps and tanks," said Jay Smith, an engineer at the Naval Ships Engineering Station, Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division (NAVSSES) in Philadelphia who has been getting the SAMMS-based replacement ready for deployment. "It's also safer, and more environmentally friendly to dispose of," she said.

Changing out life support equipment on a submarine isn't trivial (no matter how reviled the piece of equipment). Rappe and his research partners spent years improving the material before turning it over to the Navy. Since then, Smith and her colleagues have been testing the prototype SAMMS ventilation system specifically for submarines. She says the prototype is currently going through long-term testing with lab-simulated sub air. It could then be deployed on future submarines joining the fleet. Smith also noted that the SAMMS technology has already been evaluated successfully at sea through small scale test units.

And as long as the Navy's switching out gear on the sub, how about a margarita machine in the crew's mess?
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Sub air was tainted when I GOT onboard !!
Flatulence almost subbed the tube .
Test it with me
S

arleigh · Jul 21, 2018

I could use something like that in my bed room .

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New Nanomaterial Takes the Stink Out of Submarine Air

HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

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Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

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ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

Cruisin Sloth Special & Slow

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New Nanomaterial Takes the Stink Out of Submarine Air

HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

Oddcaliber Monkey+++

Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

HK_User A Productive Monkey is a Happy Monkey

Cruisin Sloth Special & Slow

arleigh Goophy monkey

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