How Do Nuclear Submarines Make Oxygen?- Smarter Every Day 251

I probably took out the old candles and they're extremely hot, yes sir, that's why we have these protective gloves, so you put them in there and let them cool, so, um. here it's pretty close you can feel how hot it is just put your hand next to it it actually cooks yeah definitely don't touch that don't touch it okay um yeah when these really burn they end up burning, I think. It wasn't 500 btus, yes, but it got very hot. I turn on the lighter, press it through the cap. Let me hold it so we have a premature ignition.

Can I come here? You're about to turn it on, oh, you are, I am, now, if you just grab it, I could tell you something similar if you grab the lighter, press down and twist, okay, you hold the light directly over it, so push it down, push it down. Put it down and just twist it like this, pass it, just pull it up. I see the smoke, so if you sit here, you can feel the pressure coming out of this pipe, yeah, and that tells us that's where the

oxygen

is. coming out, yes sir, and that's what tells us that the candle is lit correctly, really yes sir, so you are producing

oxygen

right now, you are an oxygen creator.

Well, that was until I got out of the submarine when I totally understood what was happening. here, but the two main chemicals in this candle were iron and sodium chlorate. When you burn iron, that adds oxygen to the iron and you create iron oxide, you are actually creating heat, which is the burning of the candle, but when you do that there is also sodium chlorate in the candle and that heat from the iron oxide is releasing oxygen from sodium chlorate and by doing so you actually get more oxygen from the chemical reaction. So it's important if you think about it if you're in the submarine and we had the

nuclear

reactor connected to the electrodes or whatever, that's great and you can create as much oxygen as you want through electrolysis, however, if you ever If you run out of power for any reason, you can simply light a candle and that doesn't require electricity.

In any case, as long as you have a solid sail and a way to contain the fire without damaging anything on the boat, you can start that fire and create oxygen without any external energy source. The beauty of this oxygen candle oxygen generation technique is that the solid oxygen candle has a very small volume but can create a huge amount of gas. This is very important for things like spaceships. The Americans and Russians have used oxygen sails in space for years and only once did it get out of control on the space station. Mirror oxygen sails are amazing, they are an effective and efficient way to create oxygen on board a submarine.

How often do these things burn? Normally, when we have to buy candles, we do it, we light two candles

every

two hours, once in an apartment on the fork and once in the engine room, yes, you alternate

every

two hours and you are constantly monitoring the amount of oxygen what's up. Yes, that's their job, to monitor the cameras. Our Citroën atmosphere monitoring system to verify the double show of the auction. The oxygen level increases here um no it's not going to increase instantly like that because it burns over time yeah with that what we're going to see is the O2 path right here could increase by three or four at the end of another hour or less. and then what we'll do is take the pressure right here and the O2 torque because the other one is partial pressure, yeah, it's partial pressure, so we can calculate the option percentage of that, so it usually doesn't change too much. when we burn the candles because while they're burning people are still breathing, so it might increase a little bit, but it won't be that drastic, it'll be like a continually solving equation that you're just trying to solve. like maintain you're not trying to get high yeah no we're not really trying to get high with these we're mainly trying to maintain a proper atmosphere so we can still breathe that's awesome okay cool so we know how to introduce oxygen. the submarine in our environment now we have candles and electrolysis but we still have the problem of carbon dioxide when we exhale we are creating carbon dioxide and we have to do what is called cleaning the CO2 from the atmosphere, so to do that there are two processes of the that we'll talk about, the first one involves a liquid chemical, we have two marquee bravo co2 scrubbers right here, right here, this is what allows us to breathe, yeah, so what are these machines designed to do, they remove carbon dioxide. the air uh if you take it it goes through about 370 cubic feet of air per minute so you use this chemical called monoethanolamine or you say it slower monoethanolamine okay or you ask for mba or short amin and where does the air come in ?

It will enter here, it will go down to the bedroom as if the cycle enters. Air will enter from the blower, suck, suck in air and pass through the blower tower. Yeah, and uh, names sprayed into the air and me. It will absorb all the CO2 from the air and the air will go back to the air purifier and then it will take us out, so this is fresh air coming out, yes, and then from there, from the lord's tower, targeting the rich. The amine, because it has CO2, is pumped from the amine pump to the heat exchanger right here, which basically preheats the amine before it gets to the boiler exhaust and the boiler exhaust is under pressure, which which causes higher pressure. things have to have a higher boiling temperature yeah so now we boil the target and that removes the co2 it releases it yeah so where does the co2 go?

After that it enters the compressor and is compressed to the depth of seawater, so to what depth? are and then we send it overboard, what do you mean by compressing the depth of the seawater so that it comes out as liquid co2, as gaseous co2, but like at different depths, the pressure of the water is higher, so it activates that way and it is compressed? as deep as we are and then pushes it out, creating enough pressure to expel it. Oh, I got it, the water doesn't come back, I see, okay, let's analyze this, referring to the chemical used as monoethanol amine or mea.

Also known as amine, many spouses of scuba divers complain about the smell of marksmanship on their clothing once they return from touring. Anyway, this is a really interesting substance. He referred to two adjectives to describe amine, he said rich amine and he said poor amine yes. You think of a rich amine, it's like a soft drink, the co2 or carbon dioxide is saturated in the liquid. The poor amine is like a flat Coca Cola, it has the ability to absorb CO2, but it is flat, at that moment it does not have any CO2. The time is right, so it is this ability to absorb CO2 that

make

s monoethanolamine so fantastic.

I'm a visual learner, so let's take a look at this dow. He said there are two main components to this system: first there is the absorption tower and then there is the boiler extractor. Air containing CO2 is blown into the absorption tower where lean mixture is sprayed through that air. The reason it is sprayed is because that increases the surface area between the carbon dioxide in the air and the lean amine and maximizing the contact area promotes the absorption of CO2 into the lean mixture because the lean amine is flat and wants to be gaseous, it begins to absorb that carbon dioxide from the air and then falls to the bottom of the absorption tower where it gathers into a rich mixture.

The state means that it has CO2 in solution. I don't really understand this part, but Dao said that there is a preheat function that occurs before it goes to the boiler extractor, but once it is in the boiler, the temperature of the rich amine increases and the CO2. boils converting the rich amine back into poor amine, that CO2 that then evaporated is compressed as he said to whatever pressure is necessary to push it overboard the deeper it is in the ocean, the greater the pressure must be to expel it side of the submarine, once that the CO2 is compressed and pushed overboard, somehow in that process it turns into very fine bubbles, so it dissipates into the sea water without causing too much noise, so the poor amine can be used again to spray again into the absorbent tower and the whole process starts again and this is the magic of it all.

The fact that you can take that lean amine and then enrich it and then

make

it lean again is fantastic because that means you have no consumables. on board and you can continually remove CO2 from the air indefinitely, that's really important when you're trying to be underwater for an extended period of time, so this amine system is critical to staying submerged in a submarine, so mea is one way to get it. take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in the submarine the other way you've probably heard of before and that is lithium hydroxide during the famous Apollo 13 incident the astronauts had to adapt the square lithium hydroxide canisters from the command module to the circular interface of the linear module and the reason is that they had different canisters of lithium hydroxide, which is basically just a way of passing air through this lithium hydroxide membrane or mesh or whatever you want to call it, basically just one chemical, once exposed, will remove CO2. the air so lithium hydroxide is used in many different places, rebreathers for Navy Seals, they take CO2 out of the air when an astronaut does an EVA, they use lithium hydroxide in the space suit to get CO2 out of their suit space, the beauty of Using lithium hydroxide to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is like the oxygen candle.

If the power goes out and you have no way to run your pee system, you can simply open these canisters and spray lithium hydroxide on the litter. Sailors like where they sleep and as long as it is exposed to the air it will remove CO2 from the atmosphere. It's a fantastic passive means of removing CO2 from the atmosphere so you can survive on board the submarine, so in short, how to breathe. In a submarine, you have to produce oxygen and you have to remove CO2. The main ways to do this are oxygen electrolysis and oxygen candles to remove CO2.

It will be monoethylamine and lithium hydroxide. You do all this perfectly in just the right amounts and you can breathe underwater in a submarine. This episode of Smarter Everyday is sponsored by Raycon. Raycon is a company that makes fantastic headphones. I've been running a lot lately. I have logged many miles on the road using Raycons for listening. music audiobooks I love these things, what I like the most is that there is a little button on the side of the earbud and if you are running and you touch the button it will stop whatever you are listening to, I know it sounds a bit Deal but it is a big deal when you're running and a lady comes up to you and she has a little dog, you'll say hello to the dog or any boom break, I can relate to a human, I can keep running, they're cool. she's my dog ​​princess booper snoot I just wanted you to see her she's cute she's great I love my raycons if you want to see them you can get them by visiting buyrecon.com

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submarines

series. We have learned about all these things. There are a lot of things we can do. We've talked about food, we've talked about oxygen, now we've talked about all these things that we come up with to surface the submarine, which is fantastic, so if you're interested in subscribing to Smarter Every Day, that would be awesome, so would do enormously.

I appreciate it if not, it's not a big deal, I'm just grateful that you're along for the ride, literally, so thank you so much for looking smarter every day. I'm grateful, feel free to consider supporting on Patreon if that's your kind of thing. It's not a big deal either anyway that's it I'm destined I hope you get smarter every day you say goodbye so you and dal were together yeah in the same division okay yeah I figured it out pretty quick you guys It's the guys that keep things going on the ship, I like to believe, so the backbone of the submarine, so to speak, what was Mr.

Freddie Watson's name, too, nice to meet you, Mr. Watson,listen to me, yes, and you, sir, could you test it, farmer, nice to meet you? thank you I appreciate it so this is where the auction will be held oh it's getting hotter too yeah yeah I guess quick thank you you're very smart thank you yeah where did you learn all this? Just join the navy, yeah, I mean, I learned mechanical stuff from my grandfather. and those things my dad and you just arrived in the navy and you learned all kinds of things, yes, especially the submarine force, they teach you a lot, you have to learn a lot because your life depends on it, something really happens, we are the ones who You have to fix it, there is no one else here to help us, what's wrong, brothers?

It's pretty legit, thank you very much, what's your name? Um, pedestrian, thank you.