Steve Debénath, 11 Impasse du Caladon, 06480 La Colle sur Loup, France Tél : (+33) 0620614920 eMail : steve.debenath@cegetel.net

Until now a reduction in weight for diving equipment has resulted in limitations in depth (pure oxygen rebreather) or bottom time. Rebreathers have, due to counterlung and canister volume, increased the weight of equipment, rather than decreasing it.

The Hybride is a new type of diving equipment, which allows more than one hour of diving in the entire recreational depth range, while dramatically reducing weight compared to traditional diving equipement and recreational rebreathers.

Basically the unit is a mix between open circuit scuba and a rebreather. The diver is breathing a mix of recycled and fresh breathing gas. The heart of the system , a special second stage, can be fitted to any first stage regulator and the unit with the counter lung and canister can be clipped to the D-rings of a standard BCD, which also can hold the small cylinder required for the dive (4 or 5 liter). No soda lime available? The same regulator can be used for open circuit diving. Just take a bigger cylinder and leave the bag with the canister and counter lung at the beach.

With a simple knob the second stage is switched to rebreather function or to open circuit regulator - this would be needed for diving on air to prevent the breathing gas from becoming hypoxic in shallow depth. When diving Nitrox, the system has proved itself to be OK on the PPO2 in the entire depth range and takes only a few minutes to be prepared for the dive.

The weight of your equipement is less than when diving with a 10 liter steel cylinder, but in the entire depth range you can dive longer than one hour.

As to the fields of application of the present invention, it is to be noted that the compact modular breathing or respiratory apparatus can be utilized not only for diving purposes but also for mountain climbing in high altitudes, for airline or combat pilots, for astronauts, for parachutists, for fire fighters, for mobile or stationary medical assistance (hospitals), or instead of gas masks for use in military or nuclear environments (laboratories, power plants, etc)