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

hey it's me destin welcome back to smarter every day this is a lunar lander that's a different series we're starting on smarter every day this is a nuclear submarine we are now really far into the nuclear submarine deep dive here on smarter every day and today we're going to answer a question that i've always wanted to know submarines are designed to stay underwater as long as possible and sometimes they can't even go to the surface if they want to like right now the uss toledo is currently under the ice which makes it impossible to surface to get fresh air how do you create oxygen on board a submarine because if you think about it if you're on board with a lot of your crewmates and we're taking in oxygen and we're breathing out carbon dioxide eventually the atmosphere on the inside of the submarine is going to become soured so today on smarter every day we are going to investigate how to create oxygen onboard a submarine and how to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and we're going to have two ways to do both let's get on board the toledo and let's understand how to create breathable air on a submarine let's go get smarter every day [Music] okay so in order to keep people alive on the boat we have to have an atmosphere at each location where each body is that can keep that one body alive right so ventilation is key if you have different compartments that can be closed at different times on boats for different reasons for example a huge pileup of people in the place where everybody sleeps you're going to be creating a lot more carbon dioxide in that location than other places on the boat but we have to keep the entire atmosphere livable throughout the boat so in order to do this they monitor the atmosphere of every position in the boat that's important with a system called cams the central atmospheric monitoring system so the first thing we're going to do is go figure out how to measure the atmosphere at any place in the boat and then we'll address how we deal with it with carbon dioxide or oxygen or whatever anyway let's go check out cams i'm destin i'm dell dal i'm going how do you spell that d.o.w d.o.w dow jones awesome man where are you from i'm from ohio hello what's up cool man nice to meet you yeah so so what did what do you do up here so uh sharon well i'm a machinist man auxiliary or anger they're basically mechanical hold though practically on the boat so where are you monitoring the oxygen levels so to mark the oxygen levels uh some cup of middle level called cams yeah central atmosphere monitoring station and uh we have a couple watching the monitors auction levels on there can you show me that yes yep let me get around you we're gonna see where the oxygen gets monitored yeah so this is in the middle of the boat yes and uh it has different stations we can monitor and take samples of the air to monitor our atmospheres so right now you're looking at how much o2 is on the boat yes carbon monoxide i'm really glad that there's not any there r114 so that's refrigerant yes yeah so you're monitoring that as well basically monitoring the good gases and the bad gases basically gotcha and so you've got co2 hydrogen nitrogen water that's cool and so this is the total pressure on the boat it is that's cool well in each compartment it is like like i'm saying we have different can you show me yeah it's like we take different uh sample like sampling uh panel index we can turn the dial to different stations so right now you're looking at the fan range yes so if you wanted to go what what's okay to look at it's got a cheap power supporters and so this is updated so it takes a second so this bar has to go all the way across for an update yeah kind of slow but so clearly you have some type of you have some type of alarm that has to oh yeah yeah if oxygen gets too high or if it gets too high or something gets too low it'll alarm it'll make a beeping sound so in the event that we have a bad gas that you know we have a leak of refrigerant for example do you have a way of finding the leak so i guess you could go to the panel and then you could select different sources and you can see where it's high yes and so that isolates it to that section of the boat right yes but then how do you find the actual leak like if it comes down to a pipe how do you find the leak on the pipe so for like uh r134 we have uh we call them sniffers and uh they detect uh where r134 is coming out of the piping or the plant and a little alarm when uh it attacks it so is it like it sounds like a geiger counter when you get closer to it or something yeah it does so can i see one yeah this is how the sausage gets made right here this is how you keep yourself alive on a sub okay they're like i guess we'll just show him the oxygen stuff and then i'm really excited about this here we you know go sniper sniffer can we get sniffers sure okay step away this is it yep so this is a universal refrigerant leak detector so can you show me how to use it yeah so this is what it looks like when we find a leak so that's how that's how you find the leak yes and then we can also switch to small medium large leaks so looking for a small leak uh put this small because we won't detect it if it's large you gotta have a large setting so we'll go through i guess r134 right here you'll go through and you just drag you'll drag it through the piping very slowly just like coloring in kindergarten basically yes do you have something like this for each bad gas we have a trigger kit it monitors a it tests like the sample the air they look like little tubes get the brake and you have to pump air through it it'll indicate if there's that type of gas in here i also have a so called the ph.d6 that tells us the lower the lower level explosive limit so like for hydrogen for example yeah so you have a sniffer that does that is this the air conditioning no this is for the chilling freeze box hot people get cold oh really yes is it is that on the other side of the wall or something level so you got a chiller running up yeah this is a refrigeration plant yeah all right so the cam system taught us that not only is it important to monitor oxygen and carbon dioxide but any kind of gases that might leak out into the atmosphere and harm people so the next thing i told you there are two ways to create oxygen on the boat right so for the first way i got a little excited i made a little 3d printed thing we're gonna do a little experiment we're gonna use electrolysis to create oxygen very excited about this here's how this works you did this in like sixth grade science or something like that but you get two electrodes and you put them up in the water and you put electricity on one electrode and you complete the circuit and of course h2o breaks into hydrogen and oxygen right so this was my thinking when i got on the boat well i'm on a submarine there's sea water all around the submarine i can just take in as much sea water as i want i have a nuclear reactor i can just put electrodes hook them up to the nuclear reactor and then just put those in the sea water and i can provide oxygen for everybody on the boat i'm a hero right except i would have killed everybody on the boat and that i do not want to do that this is why if you run just straight up electrolysis on seawater with salt in an nacl you will liberate chlorine gas and hydrogen not oxygen and hydrogen and that's a really bad thing and that kills people so we don't want to do that before you run electrolysis on seawater you must first purify it and the way you do that is through a filtration system and also something called reverse osmosis now reverse osmosis is complicated and i don't want to go into the the great depths of that right now but there's a lot of stuff on screen right now and that's kind of what happens wonderful okay let's come back here so electrolysis the way we're going to do that is we have this super pure reverse osmosified water in our little contraption here but what we're going to do is we're going to add potassium hydroxide and when we add that and then we hook everything up to the nuclear reactor that potassium hydroxide acts like a catalyst and it more freely liberates the oxygen and the hydrogen for water and guess what you can breathe oxygen instead of the chlorine dustin was going to try to pump into the sub that's how that works look at how big the difference is here on the left we did electrolysis on salt water you can see we ended up with hydrogen and chlorine gas which actually damaged the container on the right we did it with purified water using potassium hydroxide as an electrolyte and that broke it down into hydrogen and oxygen which is fine for the crew to breathe you make oxygen by electrolysis up up near the newt is that what is that that's the aog automated electro automated automatic electrolytic oxygen generator uh-huh and uh we use uh water and chemical called koh or potassium hydroxide got it and we essentially shock the water which creates oxygen and so uh takes water o2 or h2o and splits it from hydrogen and oxygen and we use oxygen to breathe obviously right and then we send the hydrogen overboard okay so i told you there were two methods to create oxygen on a submarine right the first method is electrolysis which i knew about the second method was a little bit counterintuitive to me this is a match burning and as you know from high school chemistry burning means oxidation meaning it is taking oxygen out of the atmosphere and creating a chemical reaction so right now this candle is now burning meaning it's oxidizing so when i heard someone on the boat say hey we're low on oxygen we need to go light a candle that was counter intuitive to me and what's about to go down oh we're about to burn chloride candles so make oxygen from the cans right over there behind you yep so you're gonna feel you're gonna burn this yeah so the way this works is the candle itself is actually inside this container and then we'll put them in a basket like this one right here yeah and the basket will go inside here but we open this up have a little striker up here and on the tip of it is red phosphorus so what we'll do is we'll have it go through here and once the candles are in we'll take this push it down and twist it and that'll light the candles okay and it lights kind of like a cigarette from what i've heard i've never actually seen one late um because we can't really leave the lid open when we light them because that's a class delta fire and we can't really put those out okay but yeah that's really about it that's it yeah okay and so and it makes oxygen as you do it how long does it burn um so each candle will burn for about 45 minutes to an hour so both candles together they can burn somewhere between 90 minutes to two hours really yes okay so you're gonna burn two at one time yes and so is this something you need to do or something you're just doing um we mostly need to do it right now because our normal way of making oxygen with the aog um that's currently down so this is sort of our backup method of creating oxygen got it and so you're monitoring the oxygen level back here yeah right so so you're monitoring the oxygen level here and if it's low then you burn the candle yep and that'll help bring the oxygen levels back out to where we need to be okay rock and roll learning exo science [Music] so is this your job uh yeah this is one of the extra things you do for our watch so um because one of my jobs is to actually monitor the atmospheres themselves so whenever i notice that oxygen is getting low enough i would have to make the recommendations to burn the candles and then if the chief of the watch agrees then we'll burn the candles and this right here is a byproduct after we burn them okay uh we call these clinkers honestly i have no idea why we call them fingers uh-huh and so you're opening the can back there sir yeah can you can you show it to me absolutely [Music] so this is the bottom of the camera let me take off this protective cloth uh-huh pretty much helps keep the candle from being damaged while it's in the can do you have a flashlight no i don't have one on me yeah flashlight perfect thank you that's the top of the kettle so see what's explaining to you about the striker that ignites it when the striker goes through the lid it presses down on this center piece here presses down on that yes and the striker has a foster's tip yes sir scandals can only be ignited due to a chemical reaction between the phosphorus and the chlorate of the candle the chlorate yes okay got it and so that'll get it going yes sir okay let me get out of your way here so this is a pretty hazardous activity then because it involves fire on a submarine yes yes sir everyone's still one one classifier knows what number somebody ever wants to do the class delta fire because it's self-oxidized plastic so it makes its own oxygen four and a half years of the next one you've never seen this happening [Music] so you're just slowly getting down to the chlorate yes sir so two candles we burn two candles at a time so pretty much maximize that out oxygen output of the counter burns [Music] so this when you touch the end with red phosphorus starts burning slowly burns becomes this yes this is the striker we actually use just a nine inch nail and this is the red phosphorus we're talking about gotcha all right sorry for this part here i am going to step back a little bit because i probably pulled the old candles out and those are extremely hot yes sir which is why we got these protective gloves so you're putting it in there and let it cool off so um here it's pretty close to it you can just feel how hot it is just like put your hand right by it actually cook yeah definitely don't touch that don't touch it okay um yes when these actually burn they end up burning with i believe it was not 500 btus yeah but they get extremely hot i igniter press it through the lid [Music] let me hold it so we'd have a premature ignition can i come over here so you're about to ignite it oh you are i am you are now if you just grab i could tell the like for you if you grab the igniter press down and twist okay you hold the light right on it so push it down push down press it down and just twist it like that just pass it just [Music] uh pull up on it i see the smoke so if you feel right here you go you can feel the pressure coming out of this pipe yeah and that is tells us that's where the oxygen is coming out yes sir and that's what tells us that the candle is ignited properly really yes sir so you're making oxygen now right now you are a creator of oxygen okay it was until i got off the sub when i totally understood what was going on here but the two main chemicals in this candle were iron and sodium chlorate when you burn iron that's adding oxygen to the iron and you're creating iron oxide you're actually creating heat that's the burning of the candle but when you do that there's also sodium chlorate in the candle and that heat from the iron oxide is liberating oxygen from the sodium chlorate and in doing so you actually get more oxygen from the chemical reaction now this is why this is important if you think about it if you're on the submarine and we had the nuclear reactor hooked up to the electrodes right or whatever that's great and you can just create as much oxygen as you want through electrolysis however if you ever lose power for whatever reason you can just light a candle and that requires no electricity whatsoever as long as you have a solid candle and a way to contain the fire without it damaging anything on the boat you can start that fire and create oxygen with no external power source whatsoever the beauty of this oxygen candle oxygen generation technique is that the solid oxygen candle is in a very small volume but it can create a tremendous amount of gas this is very important for things like spacecraft americans and russians have used oxygen candles in space for years and only one time did it get out of control on the space station mirror oxygen candles are amazing they're an effective efficient way to create oxygen onboard a submarine how often do you burn these things uh typically when we have to buy candles we do we light two candles every two hours once in a fork apartment and once in the engine room yeah you alternate every two hours and you're constantly monitoring how much oxygen is yes that's his job to monitor the cams our citroen atmosphere monitoring system to verify auction double show off the ship okay and so can you literally watch the uh the oxygen level rise here um no it won't rise up instantaneously like that because it burns over time yeah so with that what we'll see is the o2 tour right here might go up by three or four by the end of an hour or so and then what we'll do is we'll take the pressure right here and the o2 torque because the other that's partial pressure yeah that's a partial pressure so we can figure out the option percentage of that so it usually doesn't change too much when we burn the candles because as they're burning people are breathing still so it might go up by a little bit but it won't be like a huge drastic but it's like a it's like a continuously solving equation you're just trying to like maintain you're not trying to rise yeah no we're not trying to really rise with these we're mostly trying to maintain a suitable atmosphere so that we can breathe still that's awesome all right great so we know how to get oxygen in the submarine in our environment now we've got candles and electrolysis but we still have the carbon dioxide problem as we breathe out we're creating carbon dioxide and we have to do what's called scrubbing the co2 from the atmosphere so to do that there's two processes we'll talk about the first one involves a liquid chemical we have uh two marquee bravo co2 scrubbers right here right here uh so this is what's letting us breathe it is yeah so what these machines are designed to do they take carbon dioxide out of the air uh if you take it it's around 370 cubic feet of per minute air goes through so you use this chemical called mono ethanol amine or say it slower monoethanol amine okay or call for short mba or amin and uh where does it go in so air will come in to here it comes down for the bedroom like the cycle goes air will go in from the blower it will suck it'll pull in air in and go through the blower tower yeah and uh naming sprayed over top of the air and i'll absorbs all the co2 out of the air and the air goes back to the air purifier and then it gets it gets us back out so this is this is fresh air coming out yes and then from there uh from the lord tower aiming the rich amine because it uh has co2 in it it gets pumped from the amine pump into the heat exchanger which is right here which basically preheats the amine before the before gets to the boiler stripper and the boiler stripper it's under pressure uh which causes a higher pressure causes things to have higher higher boiling temperature yeah so now that we boil the aiming and that removes the co2 it releases it yes so where does the co2 go so after there uh it gets into the compressor and gets compressed to sea water depth so how deep we are and then we send it overboard what do you mean compress the sea water depth so it goes out as liquid co2 comes out as uh like gas co2 but like different depths the pressure water pressure is higher so it gets set off that way so it compresses it to however deep we are and then pushes out so it creates enough pressure to push it out oh i got it the water doesn't come back in i see okay let's break this down dow referred to the chemical being used as monoethanol amine or mea also known as amine a lot of submariners spouses complain about the aiming smell in their clothes once they get back from being on tour anyway this is a really interesting substance he referred to two adjectives to describe amine he said rich amine and he said lean amine if you think about rich amine it's like a fizzy drink co2 or carbon dioxide is in saturation in the liquid lean amine is like a flat coke it has the ability to absorb co2 but it's flat it doesn't possess any of the co2 in it at that time right so it's this ability to absorb co2 that makes monoethanol amine so fantastic i'm a visual learner so let's take a look at this dow said there are two main components to this system first there's the absorber tower and then there's the boiler stripper first air that has co2 in it is blown into the absorber tower where lean mea is sprayed through that air the reason it's sprayed is because that increases the surface area between the carbon dioxide in the air and the lean amine and that maximizing of the contact area promotes the absorption of co2 into the lean mea because the lean amine is flat and it wants to be fizzy it starts to absorb that carbon dioxide out of the air and then it falls down to the bottom of the absorber tower where it pulls together in a rich state meaning it has that co2 in solution i don't really understand this part but dao said there's a preheating function that happens before it moves over to the boiler stripper but once it's in the boiler the temperature of the rich amine is increased and the co2 boils off turning rich amine back into lean amine that co2 that then boiled off is compressed like he said to whatever pressure it takes to push it overboard the deeper you are in the ocean the higher the pressure has to be in order to push it out the side of the submarine once the co2 is compressed and pushed overboard somehow in that process it's turned into very fine bubbles so it dissipates out into the sea water without causing too much noise that lean amine can then be used again to be sprayed back over into the absorber tower and the whole process starts over again and this is the magic of the whole thing the fact that you can take that lean amine and then make it rich and then make it lean again is fantastic because that means you don't have any consumables on board and you can continuously scrub co2 from the air indefinitely that's a really big deal when you're trying to be underwater for an extended period of time so this amine system is critical for staying submerged in a submarine so mea is one way to get the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in the submarine the other way you've probably heard of before and that's lithium hydroxide during the apollo 13 incident famously 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 they had different lithium hydroxide canisters 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 a chemical once it's exposed it'll take the co2 out of the air so lithium hydroxide is used in a ton of different places rebreathers for navy seals uh they take the co2 out of the air when an astronaut does an eva they use lithium hydroxide in the spacesuit to get the co2 out of their spacesuit the beauty of using lithium hydroxide to scrub co2 from the atmosphere is just like the oxygen candle if the power goes out and you don't have a way of running your mea system you can just open these canisters even and just sprinkle lithium hydroxide out on the bunk in the sailors like where they sleep and as long as it's exposed to the air it will scrub the co2 from the atmosphere it's a fantastic passive means of getting co2 out of the atmosphere so you can survive on board the submarine so in summary how to breathe on a submarine you've got to make oxygen and you've got to scrub co2 the primary ways to do this for oxygen electrolysis and oxygen candles to scrub co2 it's going to be monoethylene amine and lithium hydroxide you do all this just right in just the right amounts and you can breathe underwater on a submarine this episode of smarter everyday is sponsored by raycon raycon is a company that makes fantastic earbuds i've been running a lot lately i have been putting many many miles on the road using raycons to listen to music audiobooks i love these things my favorite thing though is there's a little bitty button on the side of the earbud itself and if you are running and you tap the button it'll pause everything you're listening to i know that sounds like a little deal but it's a big deal when you're running and a lady comes up to you and she's got a little dog you will say hi to the dog or whatever boom pause i can engage with a human i can keep running they're great this is 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 check these out you can get them by going to buyrecon.com smarter that gets you 15 off any order you want there's two different models that i recommend there's the everyday e25 and the performer e55 this is the performer e55 the cool thing about the performer is that you have wireless charging as an option you also have a usbc charging option but the way it works is you basically put the earbuds in the case here and the case itself charges the earbuds they're fantastic they are like half the price of other premium audio brands but they sound just as good if you go to buy rakon.com smarter pick out any color you want when you get raycons they come with all these little adapters so you can tune the raycon earbud to your specific ear hole size it's like an adapter for whatever you know what i'm trying to say they're great you'll find the perfect ear hole fit for you yeah buy rakon.com smarter 15 off your order i highly recommend them there you go so here's where we're at in the smarter everyday deep dive series into submarines we've learned about all this stuff there's a ton of things we've talked about food we've talked about oxygen now we've talked about all this stuff we are coming up on surfacing the submarine which is fantastic so if you're interested in subscribing to smarter every day that'd be amazing i would greatly appreciate it if not no big deal i'm just grateful that you're along for the ride literally so thank you so much for watching smarter every day i'm grateful uh feel free to consider supporting on patreon if that's your sort of thing if not also no big deal anyway that's it i'm destined i hope you're getting smarter every day have a good one bye so you and dal were together yes in the same division okay yeah i figured out pretty quick you you're the guys that keep things going on the ship i like to believe so the backbone of the submarine if you will what was your name sir freddie also watson pleasure to meet you mr watson listen to me yeah and you sir i might test you farmer pleasure to meet you thanks appreciate it so here's where the auction's going out oh it's getting hotter too yeah yeah i guess quick thank you you're really smart thanks yeah where did you learn all this just join the navy yeah i mean i learned like mechanical stuff from my grandpa and stuff my dad and you just you just came into the navy and you learned all kinds of stuff yeah especially the submarine force they teach you a lot you have to learn a lot because your life depends on it really something goes down we're the ones that have to fix it there's no one else out here to help us what's up bros it's pretty legit thank you very much what's your name again uh pedestrian dao thank you

Channel: SmarterEveryDay

Views: 3,696,335

Rating: 4.9485722 out of 5

Keywords: Smarter, Every, Day, Science, Physics, Destin, Sandlin, Education, Smarter Every Day, experiment, slow, motion, slow motion, education, math, science, science education, Physics of, projects, experiments, science projects, navy, us navy, submarine, silent service, oxygen, chemistry, how do submarines, Submarines, nuclear submarine, nuclear submarines, lithium hydroxide, making oxygen, electrolysis, potasium hydroxide, monoethanolamine, amine, MEA, USS Toledo, Submarine series

Id: g3Ud6mHdhlQ

Length: 29min 33sec (1773 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 21 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Ethrils]

Loved the video and wanted to say that Princess Booper Snoot is adorable and deserves to have cameos in all future videos. Keep up the good work Destin!

[u/UltraRunningKid]

"Where are you from?"

"Ohio"

"Oh"

[u/m0ondoggy]

I think this series is the best thing you've ever done. I'm learning things about submarines that I didn't even know existed.

[u/OriginalKraftMan]

Great video Destin. I'm ChemE/electrochemist so I loved seeing all of the chemistry that you were talking about. If you ever need a brain to help increase the depth of your chemical understanding I'm sure all of us ChemE's who watch your channel would love to help.

All in all, I thought you explained everything pretty well. The only change I would have made would have been more careful with my language of why KOH is helpful in the electrolysis method for creating oxygen. KOH doesn't act as a catalyst, it lowers the resistance inside the water so that you can split the water at lower applied potentials (voltages).

Also, you preheat on the MEA because you already have really hot MEA that's going into the absorber which doesn't need to be hot during that process and its energy would be wasted. You also have cold MEA that needs to be boiling eventually. If you run the rich (cold) and lean (hot) MEA past each other in a heat exchanger you don't waste as much energy.

Like I said, great video Destin. Thanks for all you do to give to the community of learners.

[u/hairyhenderson_]

Got the e-mail about this (thanks!), but the clicks.aweber.com site that links through to the video is busted. Bad cert, and a 502. Looks like they need to do some fixing!

Edit: false alarm - it was an ad blocker.

[u/wnvalliant]

I kind of wounder about some of the health effects and research that had to be done prior to "man rating" those systems. I can imagine it was alot. Another thing that impressed me was how loud some of those systems were during the video.

A neat read about clandestined submarine use that is kind of related to this subject is: Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage by Annette Lawrence Drew, Christopher Drew, and Sherry Sontag

These have been super awesome and I look forward to the moon landing series as well as the last of the sub videos.

[u/Coworkerfoundoldname]

I mean this wasn't cat flipping.

Dude this was amazing!!!

Thank you for all your hard work!

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/thedudefromsweden]

Very interesting video, this is something I've always wondered about subs! To me by far the most interesting video of the series, so far. One question: how do they heat the submarine? Thanks!