Development of an oxygen concentrator

Abstract

A reliable and high quality source of oxygen is essential in daily situations

such as in anesthesia and patients with respiratory difficulty. Traditionally, people use

the oxygen tank which is not only bulky and heavy but also dangerous in some situations. That fact made people come up with the oxygen concentrator. In the oxygen concentrator, the ambient air is compressed to the pressure of

20PSI inside the zeolite canister. At the pressure of 20PSI, the nitrogen is absorbed by

the zeolite and remaining air is pure oxygen. The remaining oxygen will be released into

the oxygen reservoir by opening the valve and when the air pressure inside the canister goes to an atmospheric value, the nitrogen will be released from the zeolite and the new cycle now can be performed. The use of two canisters in parallel keeps the oxygen generation continuous. This investigation built successfully a working oxygen concentrator that could supply oxygen with a concentration of up to 60%. However, there are some limitations and disadvantages that need to be solved in future work.

Keyword: oxygen concentrator, zeolite canister, oxygen sensor, chemical absorption.