CO2 Scrubber Material

There is a critical need to develop a non-toxic, regenerative carbon dioxide (CO2) scrubber material with enhanced scrubbing capacities and safety for rebreather applications. The current state-of-the-art (SOA) scrubber material for rebreather is soda lime. Despite its overall robustness, soda-lime is highly toxic, has low CO2 capacity, and is non-regenerative. Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) will develop a novel, non-toxic high-performance CO2 scrubber for rebreather applications with enhanced material, performance, and regenerative capabilities: high surface area (>1,000 m2/g), high CO2 capacity (>2.4X), low temperature regeneration (>10 cycles). Successful development of the proposed technology will result in longer mission duration (>2.4X), increased mission safety, and decreased logistic burden compared to that of the soda lime-based rebreathers. PSI’s approach builds upon SOA industrial CO2 scrubbing techniques and PSI’s expertise in sorbent technologies. PSI already demonstrated the initial feasibility of the proposed approach. The Phase I will focus on demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed approach in simulated diving conditions (20 – 120F, 40 – 90% RH, 1 – 10 bar, 1.35 – 1.60 SLPM CO2). The Phase II will focus on producing and evaluating operational rebreather prototypes and developing a transition plan for commercialization with the identified transition partners.