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Feb. 18, 2025
Oxygen concentrators have become indispensable equipment in today's medical and industrial fields. Whether it is to help patients with breathing difficulties or to provide necessary oxygen supply in industrial production processes, it is crucial to understand how these devices work. But how exactly does an oxygen concentrator work?
The oxygen concentrator uses a unique selective adsorption technology to separate oxygen from nitrogen and other components in compressed air to produce high-purity oxygen. This technology is widely used in medical and industrial fields to ensure a continuous supply of pure oxygen.
If you are considering buying an oxygen concentrator, or are simply curious about its mechanics, this guide will provide you with a comprehensive explanation.
An oxygen concentrator is a machine that can produce oxygen. It uses air separation technology to extract oxygen from the air, also known as air separation equipment.
According to the working principle, it can be divided into PSA oxygen generator, low-temperature oxygen generator, electrolyzed water oxygen generator, and oxygen-enriched membrane oxygen generator.
According to the application scenarios, it can be divided into: industrial oxygen concentrator, household oxygen concentrator, and medical oxygen concentrator.
Industrial oxygen concentrators are powerful tools used to produce concentrated oxygen in a variety of commercial settings. They are used in both medical settings and across a wide range of industries. In medical settings such as hospitals, they provide oxygen to patients and medical procedures. Industrial sectors such as metallurgy, chemical manufacturing, waste disposal, and water treatment also rely heavily on these oxygen concentrators; they use oxygen to enhance combustion processes, promote chemical reactions, and manage waste. Therefore, the main role of oxygen concentrators is to improve the efficiency, sustainability, and productivity of various processes in different industries.
The difference between an oxygen concentrator and an oxygen concentrator is subtle, but important. Used primarily in medical settings and home healthcare, an oxygen concentrator draws in ambient air, filters out the nitrogen, and then delivers pure oxygen to the user. It is primarily designed for personal use, ensuring a continuous supply of oxygen to patients with respiratory conditions.
Oxygen concentrators, on the other hand, operate on a much larger scale and are often used in industrial settings. While it uses the same principle of separating oxygen from nitrogen, the main difference is the output. Industrial oxygen concentrators are high-capacity machines built to produce large quantities of concentrated oxygen, serving a variety of industries such as steel manufacturing, chemical processing, and wastewater treatment. They are more rugged and durable, and are able to handle demanding oxygen needs.
Air is mainly composed of nitrogen (about 78%) and oxygen (about 21%), which also includes a small amount of other gases. The core principle of the oxygen concentrator is to use the difference between the molecular size and molecular weight of nitrogen molecules and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere to obtain purer oxygen, usually with a purity of more than 90%. This article mainly introduces the working principle of the PSA oxygen concentrator.
We use PSA oxygen generators (also known as pressure swing adsorption oxygen generators) to obtain higher purity oxygen (93% ± 2). At normal temperature and pressure, we use PSA special molecular sieves to selectively adsorb impurities such as nitrogen, carbon dioxide and water vapor in the air. Our main working principle includes two molecular sieve adsorption towers. At normal temperature, we introduce filtered, dehydrated and dried compressed air into the adsorption tower. In the tower, nitrogen and other impurities are adsorbed by the molecular sieve, enriching the oxygen in the gas phase, which is then discharged and stored through the oxygen buffer tank. At the same time, the molecular sieve in the other tower quickly depressurizes after the adsorption is completed, releasing the adsorbed components. By alternating between the two towers, we can stably produce cheap oxygen with a purity of 93% ± 2.
A technology that separates air to produce oxygen through a cryogenic and distillation process. In the cryogenic process, we actively cool the air to a temperature below 100 K to liquefy it. Then, we use the difference in boiling points between oxygen and nitrogen at normal pressure (90 K for oxygen and 77 K for nitrogen) to make nitrogen with a lower boiling point easier to vaporize than oxygen. In the distillation tower, the higher temperature vapor and the lower temperature liquid are constantly in contact with each other, more nitrogen in the liquid evaporates, and more oxygen in the gas condenses, so that the nitrogen content in the rising vapor continues to increase, and the oxygen content in the downstream liquid continues to increase, so as to achieve separation from the air and produce high-purity oxygen.
The electrolyzer splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. During the electrolysis process, a power source provides electrical energy to split the water in the electrolyzer. We perform water electrolysis by chemical means, which produces hydrogen and oxygen. We discharge the hydrogen through a drain and deliver the oxygen to the desired location through a supply.
We use a special membrane material called oxygen-enriched membrane to actively separate oxygen from the air to achieve the purpose of oxygen production. Oxygen-enriched membrane is a special membrane material that contains a high concentration of oxygen molecules inside, which can selectively allow oxygen to pass through while blocking other gases from passing through.
Different types of oxygen concentrators have different working principles, so after choosing an oxygen concentrator, you can choose based on factors such as oxygen purity, flow rate, and application scenarios. If you have difficulty choosing, you can contact us!
Chemical oxygen production relies on chemical reactions to produce oxygen. For example, heating potassium chlorate (KClO3) releases oxygen. While this method is capable of producing high-purity oxygen, it is not typically used for large-scale production due to safety issues and high costs.
Knowing the parts of an oxygen concentrator is essential to understanding the function of this device. Let’s take a closer look at the main components that make up an oxygen concentrator:
The air compressor is the first important component that provides air to the oxygen concentrator. It compresses the ambient air and delivers it under pressure to the subsequent stages of the oxygen concentrator. This process helps in the effective separation of oxygen from other gases in the air.
After the air is compressed, it goes to the air pre-treatment or filtration stage where it is cleaned and dried. This system is usually a combination of filters and air dryers. They remove dust, oil, water vapor and other impurities from the compressed air before it enters the separation module. This step is critical to prevent damage that could occur to the sieve beds during the separation process.
The oxygen separation unit can be a PSA module, membrane separator or cryogenic unit and is the core component of the oxygen generator. This component separates oxygen from the surrounding air according to the separation method of the specific oxygen generator.
In a PSA-based oxygen generator, the separation unit consists of a sieve bed (filled with zeolite material) and a set of valves that manage pressure cycles. In a membrane-based separator, it is a semi-permeable membrane that can distinguish between nitrogen and other gases. And in a cryogenic unit, it involves a complex series of heat exchangers and distillation columns to cool, liquefy and separate the components of air.
Compression: First, we actively draw air into the PSA oxygen generator and then compress it. The pressure of the compressed air increases, but it still contains a lot of nitrogen and a small amount of oxygen.
Adsorption: Compressed air enters the molecular sieve adsorption tower. The molecular sieve adsorption tower operates under high pressure, and the molecular sieve selectively adsorbs oxygen in the air but not nitrogen.
Decompression: When the molecular sieve adsorption tower has absorbed a certain amount of oxygen, we will stop supplying gas to the tower and start decompression. During the decompression process, we desorb the adsorbed oxygen to form high-purity oxygen.
Recovery: The desorbed oxygen enters the gas storage tank through the recovery pipeline and is output as a product. At the same time, the pressure of the molecular sieve adsorption tower continues to decrease until it approaches atmospheric pressure.
Regeneration: We regenerate the molecular sieve adsorption tower by reducing the pressure to near atmospheric pressure, thereby exhausting the remaining nitrogen in the tower and regenerating the molecular sieve. During the regeneration process, the molecular sieve will absorb oxygen from the new air and prepare for the next cycle.
Such a cycle can achieve the purpose of continuous oxygen production, allowing users to improve oxygen production efficiency and reduce oxygen production costs while choosing an oxygen concentrator that suits them.
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