I see the advantages of the onboard oxygen generation. The old system required actual tanks to store liquid or compressed oxygen. Not only does it take up a lot of room, but it is explosive. Hopefully they have the OBOGS figured out now.
They don't even have a clue as to what is causing the problem and where in the process it's breaking down. They are just throwing band-aids at it hoping it will just go away. Other than the compressed oxygen being explosive, which isn't really that big of a deal as the cylinder that they are stored in are really durable and I can't remember an incident within the last 20 yrs where an O2 cylinder cooked off while installed on an aircraft (fighter/attack experience only). You had a system that was easy to troubleshoot and fix as it's a contained/sealed system. With the OBOGS MOD you have several outside potential sources/points of failure. The more points of possible failure you have, typically the cost to find and fix the repair goes up, the situations in which the failure occurs is broadened and the potential for failure grows drastically.
To mix any non O2 system with an O2 system is asking for catastrophic failure. For instance we have a clean room for servicing and handling O2 cylinders. This is to prevent any contact with oils/greases/fuels or any other contaminate that can and will cause the cylinder to go BOOM. We also use an O2 generation plant to produce O2 for aircrew. Even in our clean room that damn thing has caught fire, while it's cool to see a 5ft flame of doom, it sure does scare the heck out of you and your co-workers.
Now imagine this in an aircraft, a non sealed system designed to generate onboard O2 for aircrew that is sealed essentially with a filter system. What could go wrong there?
It boils down to the OBOGS system being a poor design and the problem is only exacerbated by the knee jerk reaction by those who have not a single clue how the system operates in it's environment away from the technical drawings that they rely on. Oh, before anyone says "but they are engineers", If I had a dollar for every time an engineer recommended a fix and it just ended up muddling up the situation I would be a millionaire.
This OBOGS situation is going to take a few things to get fixed:
1. Engineers and those that yay or nay these designs need to swallow their pride and admit that it's a horrible design.
2. Implement an OBOGS system overhaul by removing the need for engine bleed air
and... .
3. Revisit the "Old but reliable" system and research the feasibility of a design change to potentially replace OBOGS systems for aircrew (this is different than OBOGS on passenger aircraft as the distribution of the system is wider allowing for more protection from contamination from bleed air and the OBOGS concentrators).
