Why can’t we just harvest the oxygen in H20 and breathe under water
In: Chemistry
Fish are cold blooded. That means that their bodies don’t need to generate heat to maintain a high body temperature. Therefore, the oxygen dissolved in water is enough to sustain them. Warm blooded sea creatures like whales and seals all need to breathe air. Air is about 20% oxygen, but water is mostly just water.
A while back, I did the math on how soluable oxygen was in water, and how much water you’d have to process to gather enough oxygen to support a human being, and it was a lot to ask for a self contained deal that you could strap on your back.
Breaking the bond between H2 and O is very energy intensive. It takes less energy to get the CO2 out of the air (wash it) and rebreath it with a little amount of new O2. This is done with so called rebreather diving devices. They allow to stay for >12h under water.
And also you can not breath pure O2, it will be toxic if you go down for only 7 meters.
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