Nitrox Demystified with Capt Tom -

Nitrox Demystified with Capt Tom

Article By Tom Jerome, SDI Instructor

To Tech or not to Tech that is the question….but is it? Lets take a trip down memory lane and talk about what Nitrox is, the history, the pros and cons and why you should be using it.

So what is Nitrox?

You will hear it called many names besides Nitrox such as enriched air, voodoo gas and others. Nitrox is a mixture of gas with a higher percentage of Oxygen (O2). Air, the gas we breathe, is made up of 21% O2, 78% of Nitrogen (N) and 1% Other.

Nitrox comes in wide range of mixtures and are labeled with percentage of O2 they contain. The range for a sport diver is 22% to 40%. Yes, you heard that right, recreational use!

Back in the day of yore in diving, most everyone used air, except these crazy divers who were experimenting with different mixtures. It was a forbidden realm and though only to be for advanced tech divers. Well that’s not the case any longer! Through training and many different case studies, the world of nitrox has become an industry standard for sport divers.

So why should you take the course? Two main reasons come to mind …

Longer bottom time – the limiting factor to your bottom time is nitrogen build-up. Since Nitrox has a lower percentage of nitrogen, your tissue saturation occurs slower.
Shorter surface intervals – because your tissues have less nitrogen after a dive, you can re-enter the water sooner than when using air for some profiles (minimum surface interval recommendations still apply).

There are several other benefits, but those are the most important two in my opinion. You can see already there is real value in using nitrox for your breathing gas. However, there are some limitations but these are easily managed by planning your dive appropriately.

First off is cost, fills cost more, about $5 per cylinder depending where you go. Then there is the potential for developing CNS, which can cause seizures. This is easily avoided though by learning how to analyze your mixture and staying within the limits of that mixture.

Remember, plan your dive and dive your plan! You always want to plan the safest mix, which is based of PO2, for the maximum depth you could potentially reach during the dive.

Start your SDI Nitrox training now!

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