How is pure oxygen extracted/manufactured?
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Pressure swing absorption is pretty common for lower grade oxygen. You pump filtered and dry air into a tank filled with a sorbent material. At the increased pressure the nitrogen in the air sticks to the surface of the sorbent stuff in the tank. Then you let the gases our and the nitrogen mostly stays. So you go from 78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, 2% other stuff to 88-93% oxygen and the rest other stuff with basically no nitrogen. It’s much less energy intensive then cryogenic distillation and is more than good enough for things like medical oxygen.
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