During an oxygen shortage (like with Covid), could hospitals use a lower concentration, maybe 70-80%? From what I understand, the 99% gets diluted by different apparatuses, such as nasal cannulas (more dilution) and face masks (less dilution). I know quality control and having a reliable baseline is important too, but why is 95-99% the needed concentration?
In: Biology
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Effeciency, economically. Why have oxygen bottles that are only 70% oxygen if you’re diluting it with ambient air that is readily available everywhere. It’s more reasonable to pack the bottle full of oxygen, because that’s what your after, and dilute it later on if needed. Put it this way, would you buy a bottle of vodka (oxygen) or would you buy the same bottle that’s been mixed with water (normal air). Assuming that water is readily available, would you buy the vodka bottle and mix your own drink or buy 2 bottles of premixed to drink the same amount.
It’s your body’s incapacity of transferring the oxygen into your blood that requires you to be on supplemental oxygen. If at 21% your organs aren’t getting the job done, then you up that percentage until it does. I’m no medical professional, but that’s my understanding of it.
Oxygen is often “made” by colling down air until the party you like to use becomes a liquid and you can remove it.
Before Oxygen in the air, it is Water and Carbon dioxide that becomes a liquid/solid. Oxygen condensate at −183 °C in normal atmospheric pressure and Nitrogen and argon that is the most and third-most abundant gas in the air with oxygen in between.
So the manufacturing process results in almost pure oxygen, so it would be a bad idea to deliver in any other concentration.
If there is oxygen storage what you would do is to reduce the flow rate or mix in when used with regular air and not in the production or transport stage in the hospital.
There is also not an oxygen production problem but one of the transport container or to get it into the hospital system. There is an enormous amount of oxygen made for industrial usage. Hospital usage is a minor part of all usage.
So it is a logistic problem, not a production problem so you like 100% oxygen in the system ad the amount you transport
Hospitals can have a production system on site that is used to the max. Then you need to transport oxygen there that is externally produce transported there or increase local procution.
I think you are talking about two different things. The oxygen saturation of the air we breathe is 21% and if you are healthy, this is fine – and this should correlate to 95-99% oxygen saturation of your blood. If your blood oxygen saturation (Sp02) goes below 90-95%, we start to get worried that you are either not taking in oxygen effectively, or you are not delivering it effectively.
When we give you oxygen in the hospital there are various ways to do this, and they correspond with different oxygen saturations. The nasal cannula, depending on oxygen flow/min usually ranges from 21-40% oxygen saturation. A nonrebreather mask or face tent can do higher amounts like up to 60-80%. When someone is on a ventilator, you can more precisely control what oxygen level they should be getting. You are right that it is difficult to get 100% oxygen delivery because of pressure losses the way the apparatuses are set up. However if necessary, there is a device called high-flow nasal cannula that can achieve this level.
So a healthy person could have an Sp02 of 99% even though they are breathing 21% oxygen – meanwhile, someone with lung disease may need a nasal cannula with flow that delivers 28% oxygen to maintain that same Sp02 of 99% because without it, their Sp02 might fall to 90%. Hope this makes sense
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