Is Medical Oxygen Pure Oxygen

Oxygen is a vital element for sustaining life on the planet earth.  It is a biological necessity to breathe in oxygen in order to stay alive. Oxygen is also used on a wide range of medical applications for providing life support, respiratory therapy and anaesthetic purposes. There is no denying the fact that oxygen used in medical applications requires high purity. However, the oxygen we find in our atmosphere has only 21% of oxygen. Therefore, it is imperative that we generate commercially high purity oxygen so that we could meet the requirements of hospitals.

Typical medical applications that require use of medical oxygen include like resuscitation, inhalation, COPD, cyanosis, shock, severe hemorrhage, carbon monoxide poisoning, major trauma, cardiac/respiratory arrest. Moreover, it is also used in providing resuscitation & cardiovascular stability.All of these applications require oxygen to have purity of 99.7% or above. It is necessary medical oxygen to comply with European and Indian Pharmacopeia standards. Medical oxygen must also meet the specifications of of identification, odor, CO2 not more than 0.03% and CO not more than 0.001% in gas. The generator must be fabricated in compliance with international standards including ASME, ANSI, NEMA and CE.

Oxygen generators or plants are used for generating oxygen, which is done by either using pressure swing adsorption (PSA) or cryogenic distillation technique. Both of them are considered excellent for generating high purity oxygen. Hospitals are equipped with medical piping systems that take oxygen supplies to every patient room, operation theatre, recovery room, etc. Oxygen is stored in liquid oxygen a tank which is first vaporized into gaseous state before being fed into the hospital piping system. And, oxygen cylinder also used for supplying oxygen to patients. However, the portable oxygen cylinder is first completely vacuumed before they are filled with oxygen.