Mar. 02, 2022
The invention of oxygen generators has commercialized the availability of high-purity medical-grade oxygen. These portable devices use the pressure swing principle (PSA) to pass ambient air through a molecular sieve sorbent, concentrating oxygen in the process. Portable oxygen concentrators can easily be used for home patient care, indoor air quality improvement and other non-industrial applications. In this short article, we will help you determine the best molecular sieve oxygen concentrator for portable use.
Molecular sieves are synthetic zeolites with excellent adsorption properties that have been used in a variety of desiccant technologies and are widely used in the pharmaceutical and food industries. In addition, molecular sieves bind nitrogen and separate it from oxygen in the air, and it is this property that makes them an ideal adsorbent for portable oxygen concentrators.
Most portable oxygen concentrators use a variable pressure adsorption (PSA) or vacuum variable pressure adsorption (VPSA) mechanism to separate high purity medical grade oxygen from ambient air. As the air pressure in the concentrator fluctuates, nitrogen is adsorbed by the molecular sieve, allowing high purity oxygen to enter the flow path. The purified oxygen is then pumped through the outlet for patient care or other situations where it is needed.
The high affinity and reversible combination of nitrogen with the molecular sieve also makes it possible to manufacture a long-lasting, self-cleaning portable oxygen generator. When the oxygen concentrator is in operation, it uses a molecular sieve cartridge to concentrate the oxygen. Some of the purified oxygen is then fed into a secondary molecular sieve cartridge to remove any bound nitrogen molecules. This is done because the binding efficiency in the primary cartridge is expected to decrease over time. Once the first molecular sieve cartridge is saturated, the oxygen generator then feeds air into the second cartridge to concentrate the oxygen, while also feeding back the first cartridge to remove bound nitrogen from the molecular sieve matrix.
While sodium-based zeolites are readily available for a variety of pharmaceutical applications, studies have shown that ion-exchange lithium-based molecular sieves provide far superior oxygen recovery performance than sodium-based 13X and 5A molecular sieves. From a technical standpoint, when the Na+ cations in a sodium-based molecular sieve are replaced by Li+ cations, the zeolite has a stronger interaction with the quadrupole moment of each nitrogen molecule that passes through the cartridge. This translates into high efficiency and high purity oxygen recovery at ambient temperatures for portable concentrators using lithium-based molecular sieve cartridges.
Lithium-based molecular sieves have approximately twice the nitrogen/oxygen selectivity of sodium-based molecular sieves and are almost three times more capable of adsorbing static nitrogen. Lithium-based molecular sieves have a higher product gas capacity than sodium-based molecular sieves, making them a better choice for faster production of high-purity oxygen concentrates for emergency patient care. In addition, by using lithium-based molecular sieves, it is possible to create oxygen concentrators that take up very little space, making them ideal for home care settings where space is often limited.
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