Amphibio - an idea of ​​

If a global warming tomorrow causes flooding and seeping in most coastal urban areas in the world, how will we deal? From now on you may have to buy the Amphibio shirt below - an ultra-light coat made of polymer, 3D printed and it acts as a personal bubble-cum-personal carrying system to help us survive in the sea. country. This is a design by bio-simulation designer and material scientist Jun Kamei at the Royal College of Art, London, UK, in conjunction with the RCA-IIS design department in Tokyo.

Amphibio acts as a personal balloon-carrying system to help us survive in the sea.

Amphibio is a solution for the future assuming the year 2100 when global warming thawes at the poles that cause sea level rise, affecting up to 30% of the world's population. The visual reaction to such a flooding disaster may be higher upland in the mainland, but Kamei believes the better idea is how humans can live semi-aquatic life with something like gills. artificial.

Amphibio is an artificial bearing.

Although still in the concept phase, Amphibio is an artificial biological simulation bearing inspired by diving spiders and insects with super hydrophobic skin, allowing them to collect and keep the air bubbles around the body. . These bubbles act as fish carriers, which are to disperse oxygen in the surrounding water and release CO ₂ .

Amphibio uses the same principle as a hydrophobic porous material, very suitable for making with 3D printers and the shape we see is a shell-like shirt made up of a series of air bubbles. Oxygen is loaded into a mask that covers the nose and mouth. Kamei describes Amphibio as a junction between free diving and scuba diving when it allows divers to stay longer under water with lighter equipment.

Amphibio uses the same principle as a hydrophobic foam material, very suitable for making 3D printers.

Although Kamei understands that Amphibio is less realistic in technical terms because the technology is still far from being realistic. However, the idea of ​​an artificial fish system has been discussed for a long time since Captain Jacques Cousteau - who pioneered underwater exploration in 1962 - said the future of ocean exploration would is a form of " fishman" - we will breathe underwater. The problem here is still a big gap between ideas and reality.

In the first experiments, the researchers used semi-absorbent plastic films to extract oxygen from the water. They seem to be successful in helping hamsters put in this semi-absorbent plastic-covered box to breathe when they sink, but to create something like carrying something, the story is not that simple.

In the list of marine species there are no marine mammals that carry. There are many reasons for this but the biggest reason is that mammals have very high metabolic needs, need a lot of oxygen to support this process. If you take a liter of air on the ground, it contains about 200 ml of oxygen but if you take 1 liter of water, the ratio of oxygen is only 5 to 10ml / liter. Low oxygen levels are not a problem for cold-blooded fish, but for humans, an artificial bearing system needs to handle 10 to 20 times more water flow than air, estimated at 100 liters. per minute with 100% efficiency to provide enough oxygen to users living under water.

This means a lot of things are needed for this bearing system, one of which, as Kamei mentions, is that the contact surface must be large, equivalent to 50 - 75m ² and handle the huge flow of water. Next is the problem of artificial, inert gases such as Amphibio that can filter oxygen from water but it cannot filter nitrogen, so the nitrogen in the diver's lungs will release when breathing makes the class The gas retained by the hydrophobic surface is reduced and completely lost when nitrogen is diffused into the surrounding water.

The idea of ​​Amphibio is very good despite the current technology making it difficult to go further.

Another problem is that artificial pressure and bearing will operate at a shallow water level, but if the person dives more than a few feet deep, the water pressure will damage the breathing system, air bubbles and oxygen masks will be inundated. country. Diver with specialized equipment today does not encounter this problem because the oxygen system is designed to balance the pressure, provided not at many pressure levels depending on the depth.

The idea of ​​Amphibio is very good despite the current technology making it difficult to go further. Even so it shows us about a futuristic fantasy-like movie, wearing a special suit, not oxygen-laden but still able to swim, live normally under the sea.