This is probably a cliche in science fiction: a certain viscous substance enters a suit or capsule very quickly, and the main character suddenly discovers for himself how quickly he loses the rest of the air from his own lungs, and his insides are filled with an unusual liquid of a shade from lymph to blood . In the end, he even panics, but takes a few instinctive sips, or rather sighs, and is surprised to find that he can breathe this exotic mixture as if he were breathing ordinary air.
Are we so far from realizing the idea of liquid breathing? Is it possible to breathe liquid mixture, and is there a real need for this?
There are three promising ways to use this technology: medicine, diving to great depths and astronautics.
The pressure on the body of a diver increases with every ten meters by one atmosphere. Due to a sharp decrease in pressure, decompression sickness can begin, with the manifestations of which the gases dissolved in the blood begin to boil with bubbles. Also, at high pressure, oxygen and narcotic nitrogen poisoning is possible. All this is fought with the use of special respiratory mixtures, but they do not give any guarantees, but only reduce the likelihood of unpleasant consequences. Of course, you can use diving suits that maintain pressure on the diver's body and his breathing mixture to exactly one atmosphere, but they, in turn, are large, bulky, make movement difficult, and also very expensive.
Liquid breathing could provide a third solution to this problem while maintaining the mobility of elastic wetsuits and the low risks of rigid suits. Breathing fluid, unlike expensive breathing mixtures, does not saturate the body with helium or nitrogen, so there is also no need for slow decompression to avoid decompression sickness. 
In medicine, liquid breathing can be used in the treatment of premature babies in order to avoid damage to the underdeveloped bronchi of the lungs by pressure, volume and oxygen concentration in the air of ventilators. Selection and testing of various mixtures to ensure the survival of a premature fetus began already in the 90s. It is possible to use a liquid mixture with complete stops or partial respiratory insufficiencies.
Space flight is associated with large overloads, and liquids distribute pressure evenly. If a person is immersed in a liquid, then during overloads, the pressure will go to his entire body, and not specific supports (chair backs, seat belts). This principle was used to create the Libelle g-suit, which is a rigid spacesuit filled with water, which allows the pilot to remain conscious and efficient even at g-forces above 10 g.
This method is limited by the density difference between human body tissue and the immersion fluid used, so the limit is 15-20g. But you can go further and fill the lungs with a liquid close in density to water. An astronaut completely immersed in liquid and breathing liquid will feel relatively little the effect of extremely high g-forces, since the forces in the liquid are distributed evenly in all directions, but the effect will still be due to the different density of his body tissues. The limit will still remain, but it will be high.
The first experiments on liquid breathing were carried out in the 60s of the last century on laboratory mice and rats, which were forced to inhale a saline solution with a high content of dissolved oxygen. This primitive mixture allowed the animals to survive for a certain amount of time, but it could not remove carbon dioxide, so the lungs of the animals were irreparably damaged.
Later, work began with perfluorocarbons, and their first results were much better than those of the brine experiments. Perfluorocarbons are organic substances in which all hydrogen atoms are replaced by fluorine atoms. Perfluorocarbon compounds have the ability to dissolve both oxygen and carbon dioxide, they are very inert, colorless, transparent, cannot damage lung tissue and are not absorbed by the body.
Since then, breathing fluids have been improved, the most advanced solution to date is called perflubron or "Liquivent" (commercial name). This oil-like transparent liquid with a density twice that of water has many useful qualities: it can carry twice as much oxygen as ordinary air, has a low boiling point, so after use, its final removal from the lungs is carried out by evaporation. The alveoli under the influence of this liquid open better, and the substance gets access to their contents, this improves the exchange of gases.
The lungs can fill completely with fluid, which will require a membrane oxygenator, a heating element, and forced ventilation. But in clinical practice, most often they do not do this, but use liquid breathing in combination with conventional gas ventilation, filling the lungs with perflubron only partially, approximately 40% of the total volume.
Frame from the movie The Abyss, 1989
What prevents us from using liquid breathing? The breathing fluid is viscous and poorly removes carbon dioxide, so forced ventilation of the lungs will be required. To remove carbon dioxide from a typical person weighing 70 kilograms would require a flow of 5 liters per minute or more, and this is a lot given the high viscosity of liquids. With physical exertion, the amount of required flow will only increase, and it is unlikely that a person will be able to move 10 liters of fluid per minute. Our lungs are simply not designed to breathe liquid and are not able to pump such volumes on their own.
Using the positive traits of breathing fluid in aviation and astronautics may also forever remain a dream - the liquid in the lungs for a g-suit must have the density of water, and perflubron is twice as heavy.
Yes, our lungs are technically capable of "breathing" a certain oxygen-rich mixture, but unfortunately we can only do so for a few minutes at the moment, because our lungs are not strong enough to circulate the breathing mixture for extended periods of time. The situation may change in the future, it remains only to turn our hopes to researchers in this area.
When climbing mountains, due to a drop in atmospheric pressure, the partial pressure of oxygen in the alveolar space decreases. When this pressure falls below 50 mmHg . Art. (5 km altitude), an unadapted person needs to breathe a gas mixture in which the oxygen content is increased. At an altitude of 9 km, the partial pressure in the alveolar air drops to 30 mm Hg. . Art., and it is practically impossible to withstand such a state. Therefore, inhalation of 100% oxygen is used. In this case, at a given barometric pressure, the partial pressure of oxygen in the alveolar air is 140 mm Hg. . Art., which creates great opportunities for gas exchange. At an altitude of 12 km, when ordinary air is inhaled, the alveolar pressure is 16 mm Hg. . Art. (death), when pure oxygen is inhaled - only 60 mm Hg . Art., i.e., you can still breathe, but it is already dangerous. In this case, it is possible to supply pure oxygen under pressure and ensure breathing when ascending to a height of 18 km. Further ascent is possible only in spacesuits.
Breathing underwater at great depths
When lowered under water, the atmospheric pressure increases. For example, at a depth of 10 m, the pressure is 2 atmospheres, at a depth of 20 m - 3 atmospheres, etc. In this case, the partial pressure of gases in the alveolar air increases by 2 and 3 times, respectively.
This threatens with a high dissolution of oxygen. But its excess is no less harmful to the body than its deficiency. Therefore, one way to reduce this danger is to use a gas mixture in which the percentage of oxygen is reduced. For example, at a depth of 40 m they give a mixture containing 5% oxygen, at a depth of 100 m - 2%.
Second problem is the influence of nitrogen. When the partial pressure of nitrogen increases, this leads to an increased dissolution of nitrogen in the blood and causes a narcotic state. Therefore, starting from a depth of 60 m , the nitrogen-oxygen mixture is replaced by a helio-oxygen mixture. Helium is less toxic. It begins to have a narcotic effect only at a depth of 200-300 m. . Research is currently underway on the use of hydrogen-oxygen mixtures for operation at depths of up to 2 km, since hydrogen is a very light gas.
Third problem diving operations - this is decompression. If you quickly rise from a depth, then the gases dissolved in the blood boil and cause a gas embolism - blockage of blood vessels. Therefore, gradual decompression is required. For example, climbing from a depth of 300 m requires 2 weeks of decompression.
Ichthyanders among us. Russian scientists have begun testing the technology of liquid breathing in submariners. Experiments are currently being carried out on dogs. The record for breathing in liquid is already 30 minutes. How miracles from novels and films are brought to life, the correspondent of Vesti FM Sergey Gololobov found out.
observation of the experiment. Dachshunds are immersed in a bath of liquid face down. Surprisingly, the dog did not choke, but began to breathe that same liquid. Swallowing it convulsively, jerkily. But she was breathing. After 15 minutes, they pulled her out. The dog was lethargic, more likely from hypothermia, but, most importantly, alive. And after a while, she returned to her usual playful mood. Miracle. Something similar was shown in the famous Hollywood movie "Abyss" in 1989. There, some additives were poured into a flask with water, and a white rat was launched there. And everything is filmed naturally. And the rat actually breathed supposedly under water.
And the trick of this episode from the movie "The Abyss" is that the rat did not breathe water as such, but some kind of special liquid. It is on this that the technology of liquid breathing is based. Perfluorocarbon compounds are considered to be the most suitable substances for this purpose. They dissolve oxygen and carbon dioxide well in themselves and do not harm the body. That is, living beings do not inhale water, but those same liquid carbons. Why do people need it, said a pulmonologist, head of the scientific topic on liquid breathing since the eighties. Andrey Filippenko.
“This is needed to save the submariners. At high pressure, if they have liquid in their lungs, if they extract oxygen from this liquid, then they will be able to get out at a great depth, and quickly, without any decompression problem, rise to the surface.
It is known that the exit from great depths takes hours for divers and submariners. If you rise to the surface quickly, then you will be overtaken by decompression sickness. Nitrogen bubbles that enter the bloodstream with the respiratory mixture boil due to a sharp pressure drop and destroy blood vessels. If you use the device with a special breathing fluid, these problems will not arise, explains Andrey Filippenko.
“The fluorocarbon liquid is a carrier, so to speak, of nitrogen-oxygen, that is, a carrier. But unlike nitrogen, which passes into the tissue of the body at high pressure, at depth, and because of this, bending sickness occurs, this is not the case here. That is, there is no reason for decompression sickness. There is no supersaturation with inert gas of the body. That is, there is no fundamental reason for bubbles.”
Experiments on liquid breathing have been actively conducted since the 60s in the Soviet Union and the USA. But the matter did not go further than experiments with animals. After the collapse of the Union, our scientific search in this direction came to naught. But very powerful developments remained. And now it was decided to use them in a new way, he says Andrey Filippenko.
“Great groundwork in the technology of liquid breathing, and in liquids. And plus we still have the consequences of these liquids. Because all fluorocarbons injected into the blood, and we have been using such a substance for 25 years, exit through the lungs. That is, we also know the consequences of the influence on the body of the introduction of perfluorocarbons into it. The Americans or the French, the British do not have such data.
Recently, Russian scientists created a special capsule for dogs, which was immersed in a pressurized hydro chamber. And now dogs can breathe without health consequences for more than half an hour at a depth of up to half a kilometer. And soon it is planned to move on to experiments on humans. The worst thing is, of course, to force yourself to inhale the liquid, the president of the Confederation of Underwater Activities of Russia reflects. Valentin Stashevsky:
“When you inhale water, it's just a nightmare. This means the first way to drown. So it was for all historical previous events. You choke as soon as water enters the respiratory tract and so on.
Nevertheless, those who want to actually become drowned, but at the same time start breathing like an amphibian man, well, or Sadko, we have, notes Andrey Filippenko.
“There are volunteers. But let's clarify right away that only those people who understand very well what can happen can be volunteers here. That is, it can actually be only those doctors who have done a lot of liquid breathing. These are the ones on our team. And not alone. You just need to organize everything properly.”
Now work on liquid breathing has been transferred to the Research Institute of Occupational Medicine. The main goal of the research is to create a special suit that will be useful not only for submariners, but also for pilots and astronauts. But, we repeat, we are talking about breathing special liquids. Breathe directly with water, like an ichthyander, while it is not available to a person.
Scientific research does not stop for a day, progress is on, giving mankind more and more new discoveries. Hundreds of scientists and their assistants are working in the field of studying living beings and synthesizing unusual substances. Entire departments are experimenting, testing various theories, and sometimes the discoveries amaze the imagination - after all, what could only be dreamed of can become a reality. They develop ideas, and questions about freezing a person in a cryochamber with subsequent thawing in a century or about the ability to breathe liquid are not just a fantastic story for them. Their hard work can make these fantasies come true.
Scientists have long been concerned about the question: can a person breathe liquid?
Does a person need liquid breathing
No efforts, no time, no money are spared for such research. And one of these questions that have been worrying the most enlightened minds for decades is as follows - is liquid breathing possible for a person? Will the lungs be able to absorb oxygen not from a special liquid? For those who doubt the real need for this type of breathing, we can give at least 3 promising areas where it will serve a person in good stead. If, of course, they can implement it.
- The first direction is diving to great depths. As you know, when diving, the diver experiences the pressure of the aquatic environment, which is 800 times denser than air. And it increases by 1 atmosphere every 10 meters of depth. Such a sharp increase in pressure is fraught with a very unpleasant effect - the gases dissolved in the blood begin to boil in the form of bubbles. This phenomenon is called "caisson sickness", it often affects those who are actively involved. Also, when swimming in deep waters, there is a risk of getting oxygen or nitrogen poisoning, since in such conditions these gases that are vital to us become very toxic. In order to somehow fight this, they use either special breathing mixtures or rigid spacesuits that maintain a pressure of 1 atmosphere inside themselves. But if liquid breathing were possible, it would become the third, easiest solution to the problem, because the respiratory liquid does not saturate the body with nitrogen and inert gases, and there is no need for long decompression.
- The second way of application is medicine. The use of breathing fluids in it could save the lives of premature babies, because their bronchi are underdeveloped and ventilators can easily damage them. As you know, in the womb, the lungs of the embryo are filled with liquid and by the time of birth, it accumulates pulmonary surfactant - a mixture of substances that does not allow tissues to stick together when breathing air. But with an early birth, breathing requires too much strength from the baby and this can be fatal.
History has a precedent for the use of total fluid ventilation, and it dates back to 1989. It was applied by T. Shaffer, who worked as a pediatrician at Temple University (USA), saving premature babies from death. Alas, the attempt was unsuccessful, three small patients did not survive, but it is worth mentioning that the deaths were caused by other causes, and not by the liquid breathing method itself.
Since then, fully ventilated human lungs have not dared, but in the 90s, patients with severe inflammation were subjected to partial liquid ventilation. In this case, the lungs are only partially filled. Alas, the effectiveness of the method was controversial, since conventional air ventilation worked just as well.
- Application in astronautics. With the current level of technology, an astronaut experiences g-forces up to 10 g during flight. After this threshold, it is impossible to maintain not only working capacity, but also consciousness. Yes, and the load on the body is uneven, and along the fulcrum, which can be excluded when immersed in a liquid, the pressure will spread equally to all points of the body. This principle underlies the design of the rigid Libelle spacesuit, filled with water and allowing the limit to be increased to 15-20 g, and even then because of the limitation of the density of human tissues. And if the astronaut is not only immersed in liquid, but his lungs are also filled with it, then it will be possible for him to easily endure extreme overloads far beyond the 20 g mark. Not infinite, of course, but the threshold will be very high if one condition is met - the liquid in the lungs and around the body must be equal in density to water.
The origin and development of liquid breathing
The very first experiments date back to the 60s of the last century. The first to test the emerging technology of liquid breathing were laboratory mice and rats, forced to breathe not air, but a saline solution, which was under a pressure of 160 atmospheres. And they breathed! But there was a problem that prevented them from surviving in such an environment for a long time - the liquid did not allow carbon dioxide to be removed.
But the experiments didn't stop there. Further, research began on organic substances whose hydrogen atoms were replaced by fluorine atoms - the so-called perfluorocarbons. The results were much better than those of the ancient and primitive liquid, because perfluorocarbon is inert, not absorbed by the body, and perfectly dissolves oxygen and hydrogen. But it was far from perfection and research in this direction continued.
Now the best achievement in this area is perflubron (commercial name - "Liquivent"). The properties of this liquid are amazing:
- The alveoli open better when this fluid enters the lungs and gas exchange improves.
- This liquid can carry 2 times more oxygen compared to air.
- The low boiling point allows it to be removed from the lungs by evaporation.
But our lungs are not designed for completely liquid breathing. If you fill them completely with perflubron, you will need a membrane oxygenator, a heating element and air ventilation. And do not forget that this mixture is 2 times thicker than water. Therefore, mixed ventilation is used, in which the lungs are filled with liquid only by 40%.
But why can't we breathe liquid? All because of carbon dioxide, which is very poorly removed in a liquid medium. A person weighing 70 kg must drive 5 liters of the mixture through himself every minute, and this is in a calm state. Therefore, although our lungs are technically capable of extracting oxygen from liquids, they are too weak. So one can only hope for future research.
water like air
In order to finally proudly announce to the world - "Now a person can breathe underwater!" - scientists sometimes developed amazing devices. So, in 1976, biochemists from America created a miracle device capable of regenerating oxygen from water and providing it to a diver. With sufficient battery capacity, a diver could stay and breathe at depth almost indefinitely.
It all started with the fact that scientists began research based on the fact that hemoglobin delivers air equally well from both the gills and the lungs. They used their own venous blood mixed with polyurethane - it was immersed in water and this liquid absorbed oxygen, which is generously dissolved in water. Further, the blood was replaced with a special material, and as a result, a device was obtained that acted like the usual gills of any fish. The fate of the invention is this: it was acquired by a certain company, having spent 1 million dollars on it, and since then nothing has been heard about the device. And, of course, he did not go on sale.
But this is not the main goal of scientists. Their dream is not a breathing device, they want to teach the person himself to breathe liquid. And attempts to realize this dream have not been abandoned so far. So, one of the research institutes in Russia, for example, conducted tests on liquid breathing on a volunteer with a congenital pathology - the absence of the larynx. And this meant that he simply did not have the reaction of the body to the liquid, in which the smallest drop of water on the bronchi is accompanied by compression of the pharyngeal ring and suffocation. Since he simply did not have this muscle, the experiment was successful. Fluid was poured into his lungs, which he stirred throughout the experiment with the help of abdominal movements, after which it was calmly and safely pumped out. Characteristically, the salt composition of the fluid corresponded to the salt composition of the blood. This can be considered a success, and scientists claim that they will soon find a method of liquid breathing available to people without pathologies.
So myth or reality?
Despite the stubbornness of a person who passionately wants to conquer all possible habitats, nature itself still decides where to live. Alas, no matter how much time is spent on research, no matter how many millions are spent, it is unlikely that a person is destined to breathe under water as well as on land. People and marine life, of course, have a lot in common, but there are still much more differences. An amphibian man would not have endured the conditions of the ocean, and if he had managed to adapt, then the road back to land would have been closed to him. And as with scuba divers, amphibious people would go to the beach in water suits. And therefore, no matter what enthusiasts say, the verdict of scientists is still firm and disappointing - a long life of a person under water is impossible, it is unreasonable to go against mother nature in this regard, and all attempts at liquid breathing are doomed to failure.
But do not despair. Although the bottom of the sea will never become our home, we have all the mechanisms of the body and technical capabilities in order to be frequent guests on it. So is it worth it to be sad? After all, these environments have already been conquered by man to a certain extent, and now the abysses of outer space lie before him.
And for now, we can say with confidence that the depths of the ocean will be an excellent workplace for us. But perseverance can lead to a very thin line of real breathing under water, one has only to work on solving this problem. And what will be the answer to the question of whether to change land civilization to underwater, depends only on the person himself.
Photo: RIA Novosti
Sergei Pyatakov
The man of the future will be able to dive to great depths, but he will have to learn how to breathe liquid.
Liquid breathing, or breathing with the help of a liquid that dissolves oxygen well, has long been a fixed idea for scientists around the world. The "amphibian man" device is able to save the lives of scuba divers and submariners, this technology can be used in medicine, and in the future it will be useful in long-term space flights when exploring other planets. Real developments on the creation of a liquid breathing apparatus were carried out in the 1970-1980s in the USSR and the USA, then experiments were carried out on animals, but no great success was achieved. How promising and realistic this technology remains, the Sovershenno Sekretno correspondent understood.
It should be noted that liquid respiration at first glance seems like a fantastic fiction, but in fact it has a completely scientific basis, and a serious theoretical basis has been put under this idea. Instead of oxygen, scientists propose to use special chemical compounds that are able to dissolve oxygen and carbon dioxide very well.
LIQUID BREATHING WILL SAVE DIVER FROM BOW SICKNESS
Vice Admiral, Hero of Socialist Labor, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor, Full Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Chairman of the Special Underwater Operations Committee under the Government of the Russian Federation in 1992-1994, Tengiz Borisov told Top Secret that experiments with liquid breathing have been going on for several decades.
“Currently, a person is limited in his abilities - a diver, in whose breathing cylinders there is ordinary air, can dive to a depth of 60 meters without risk to health. In exceptional cases, the most experienced swimmers reached 90 meters, further the human body is exposed to the toxic effects of nitrogen. After special helium-containing gas mixtures appeared, in which a small constant pressure of oxygen is maintained and there is no nitrogen, it became possible to dive up to 300 meters in hard suits, and this is the limit.
The main enemy of divers is decompression sickness: when surfacing from a great depth, due to the rapid decrease in the pressure of the inhaled respiratory mixture, gases that dissolve in the blood begin to exude rapidly, as if a bottle of champagne was shaken and the wine inside foamed. Gases destroy the walls of cells and blood vessels, clog capillaries, block blood flow, the consequences are terrible - in severe form, decompression sickness can lead to paralysis or death.
To move further to the depth, new technologies are needed. And today, the principle of liquid breathing is considered as the most promising. This method should overcome the main problems of divers: during descent and ascent, the compression issue will be resolved, there will be no compression of the chest, since liquids are practically not compressible.
However, even if special liquid mixtures are created, methods for applying liquid breathing will have to be developed. Indeed, in order for a person to fill his lungs with a viscous substance, he will have to overcome the most severe psychological resistance of the body. Experiments were carried out on people: when trying to fill the lungs, a person involuntarily triggers reflexes, the larynx begins to shrink and the lungs overlap.
A person has an innate reaction to water - it is enough for a drop to fall on the sensitive cells of the bronchi, as the annular muscle squeezes the throat, spasms occur, and then suffocation occurs. Although the special liquid cannot cause any harm, the body refuses to understand this, and the brain gives the command to resist. In conclusion, no less unpleasant procedure when this fluid must be removed from the lungs. But if a solution is found, it will be a serious breakthrough - then divers will be able to work at very great depths.
It is assumed that this technology will be used for military purposes, for exploration of oil and gas fields and maintenance of deep-sea wells, as well as for lifting valuables from ships sunk at great depths. Today, there are several developments in the world that allow us to hope that this technology will get a ticket to the future.”
RESEARCH HELPED THE WORK OF AMERICAN NEONATOLOGISTS
Americans turned to the idea of liquid breathing in the 1960s. And perhaps their greatest achievement is the registered patent for a diving suit equipped with a cylinder with a special liquid enriched with oxygen. According to the author's idea, the so-called liquid air, which is supplied from a cylinder to a diver's helmet, fills the entire space around the head, displaces air from the lungs, nasopharyngeal cavities and ears, saturating the human lungs with enough oxygen. It was supposed to create a breathing liquid based on perfluorocarbons, in which the required amount of gas can be dissolved.
In turn, carbon dioxide, which is released during breathing, had to be excreted using a kind of analogue of the gills attached to the diver's femoral vein. As a result, oxygen enters the blood through the lungs, and carbon dioxide is removed directly from the blood. True, in order to use such a system, a person will have to learn how to do without using the main functions of the respiratory system - inhalations and exhalations.
The first experiments related to breathing with the help of a liquid were carried out by the Americans in the 1960s. They were carried out on rodents. Scientists have carried out a complete replacement of the blood of rats with an emulsion with a high concentration of liquid oxygen. For some time, the animals could breathe liquid, but their body could not remove carbon dioxide, which after a short time led to the destruction of the lungs. In subsequent years, the formula has been refined.
One of the most successful developments has been the liquid used in LiquiVent, a drug designed to treat severe breathing problems in premature newborns. By its consistency, it is a clear oily liquid of low density, which contains more oxygen than air. Since this liquid is inert, it does not harm the lungs, as it has a very low boiling point and is quickly and easily removed from the lungs.
This substance also attracts specialists because it is colorless, odorless and non-toxic - almost like air. This liquid holds much more than air, the amount of oxygen per unit volume. During the following experiments, mice and cats, immersed in an oxygenated perfluorocarbon liquid, lived for several days. However, during the experiments it also turned out that the delicate lungs of mammals are poorly adapted to constantly pumping in and pumping out liquid - therefore, it can only replace air with it for a very short time.
The idea of a liquid breathing system is now used in their practice by neonatologists who have been using similar technologies to care for premature babies for more than 20 years. In this branch of medicine, liquid breathing has been widely used. This method is used to save newborns. The lung tissue of such babies is not fully formed by birth, therefore, with the help of special devices, the respiratory system is saturated with an oxygen-containing solution based on perfluorocarbons. It is no coincidence that American experimenters certainly include doctors of this profile in the composition of groups for the creation of liquid breathing.
LARGE MAMMALS NEVER LEARNED TO BREATH LIQUID
Subsequently, due to the improvement of the respiratory fluid, it was possible to achieve many hours of liquid breathing in small laboratory animals - mice and rats, and in dog puppies. However, scientists faced a new problem - to achieve sustainable liquid breathing in large laboratory animals (adult dogs, whose tracheal diameter and lung arrangement are close to humans) did not work out. Adult dogs withstood no more than 10-20 minutes and died from pulmonary insufficiency. Switching to artificial ventilation with liquid lungs using clinical equipment improved performance, but the developers do not consider additional equipment for breathing equipment.
In order for a person to breathe liquid, it must perform two main functions: supply oxygen to the lungs and remove carbon dioxide. This property is possessed by oxygen, which a person inhales, and several other gases, and, as scientists have proven, some liquids are also capable of performing similar functions. At the same time, unsuccessful experiments with liquid breathing also have an explanation: human lungs perceive and remove liquid much harder than air, so the process of replacing carbon dioxide with oxygen occurs with a great slowdown.
Indeed, human lungs are technically capable of "breathing" a certain oxygen-rich liquid mixture, but only for a few minutes. Assuming that liquid breathing becomes widespread, then sick people using liquid air for medical purposes will have to constantly use additional devices, in fact, carry a ventilator on themselves to stimulate breathing. Divers, who are already experiencing severe discomfort underwater, will have to carry additional equipment, while breathing liquid during long and deep dives will not be easy.
A DIVING SUIT USING LIQUID BREATHING PRINCIPLE IS PATENTED IN THE USA
IN RUSSIA, POSSIBLE, THEY MADE EXPERIENCE ON A HUMAN
The Soviet Union also had liquid breathing programs. In one of the Soviet research institutes, significant results have been achieved in the implementation of liquid breathing. Special devices were developed, experiments were carried out on animals, and certain results were achieved. Mice and dogs, indeed, breathed liquid, and for quite a long time. There is information that in 1991 the first experiments on volunteers were to take place. It should be noted that in the Soviet Union these programs did not have a commercial focus and were associated exclusively with military developments.
Therefore, due to the termination of funding, all work was curtailed, and later completely stopped. However, recently some projects have been revived. As “Top Secret” managed to find out, in one of the Russian defense research institutes, an experiment was conducted with a volunteer, whose larynx was removed as a result of a surgical operation due to a dangerous pathology (therefore, the annular muscle was absent, which made it possible to successfully conduct the experiment).
The man was poured with a special solution first into the lungs, and then immersed under water in a specially made mask. After the experiment, fluid from his lungs was painlessly pumped out. Encouraged by this success, Russian experts claim that in the future ordinary people with a normal throat will be able to breathe underwater, since overcoming the body's reflex reaction to liquid is quite realistic.
Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, Candidate of Medical Sciences Andrey Filippenko, who has been working on the liquid breathing project for a long time, told Top Secret that at present, practically nothing can be said about these developments due to their closed nature.
“Today, these developments are being carried out both in the interests of the military and in the civilian sphere. There are many technological difficulties that are holding back the progress of these projects. Currently, this technology works exclusively in the laboratory and is completely unsuitable for use in real conditions. For example, at great depths. This technology does not work well not only in Russia, but also abroad. In order to move forward, a lot of technologies need to be improved, including those related to overcoming a lot of pressure.”
LIQUID BREATHING MAY BE DEMANDED IN SPACE AND FROM SUBMARINES
In the Soviet Union, the idea of an interplanetary flight was considered at one time. Since space flight is associated with large overloads of astronauts, options were analyzed how to reduce them. Among other things, the option of immersing space travelers in liquid was proposed. Indeed, if a person is immersed in a water-like solution, then during overloads, the pressure will spread evenly over the entire body. This principle was used to create an anti-g suit, which is used in the German Air Force. The manufacturer - the German-Swiss company AutoflugLibelle - replaced the air cushions with hermetic vessels with liquid. Thus, the suit is a rigid spacesuit filled with water. This allows the pilot to maintain consciousness and performance even with huge (over 10 g) g-forces.
However, using the positive properties of a breathing fluid in aviation and astronautics may forever remain a dream - the substance for an anti-g suit must have the density of water, and the only working fluorocarbon fluid today is twice as heavy. If the idea is successfully implemented, an astronaut immersed in a liquid medium and breathing solid oxygen will practically not feel the effect of extremely high g-forces, since the forces will be distributed evenly in all directions.
There is no doubt that the technology of liquid breathing is primarily needed by submariners. As paradoxical as it sounds, there are currently no reliable ways to save people in distress at great depths. Not only here, but throughout the world, methods and techniques for rescuing those in distress at great depths have practically not been developed for many years. The fact that the means of emergency rescue of crews is hopelessly outdated and in need of an early modernization was shown by the tragedy of the Kursk submarine.
The submarine was equipped with equipment to help get out of it in the event of an accident, but the pop-up rescue chamber was damaged by the explosion and could not be used. In addition, for each member of the team, a full-time individual rescue equipment was provided, which made it possible to escape from a depth of up to 120 meters. A few minutes required for lifting, a person in this equipment can breathe an oxygen-helium mixture. But people could not use these funds either. Among other things, this is due to the fact that helium cylinders are not stored on the submarine, since at a high concentration in the air this gas can cause asphyxiation and a state of oxygen deficiency.
Such is the great disadvantage of individual equipment. The rescuers had to pass the cylinders to the team members outside, through the hatches of the lock chamber. It should be noted that all this equipment was developed back in 1959 and has not changed in any way since then. And today, there are no alternatives in sight. Perhaps that is why the use of liquid breathing in maritime rescue is said to be the most promising method of the future.
