Medical 'Homefill' Oxygen?

The problem with the home-fill tanks is that nobody checks whether they are due for hydro. If you bring a timed out tank to a gas supplier, they are not going to fill it for you.

But then, 1500 is probably a fraction of what the vessels are rated at.

A gas supplier wouldn’t fill a homefill tank period. They don’t have standard connectors and are quite small. They are rated close to 3000 psi for burst.

That said I have brought standard tanks that are 5+ years expired and they did fill them but only after a hydro test.
 
That said I have brought standard tanks that are 5+ years expired and they did fill them but only after a hydro test.

Right, but after the hydro test they weren't ''timed out' anymore. The gas suppliers are the enforcement mechanism for small DOT cylinders (which fails if someone transfills small tanks from larger ones at home).

There are some hard time limits on certain tanks. Wound composite tanks iirc turn into a decoration at 15 years.
 
Ok did some tests with a hydro meter but want to do them again as I’m not sure this one goes below 16%

Here is the baseline 27% humidity 66d in open air
0490DA13-23DA-4520-80E7-1C296B0CFC29.jpeg

Then from the concentrator 16% humidity 66d at 2l min sealed in a ziplock bag

4AAF4DAD-022C-4866-9FE5-1FF394A03596.jpeg

Then from the bottle at 16% humidity 64d at 2l min sealed in a ziplock bag

799A11A6-805D-49A6-9E57-4C4AE1BA84AA.jpeg


The reason I think it might be lower the 16% is I blew in the line for a bit and it didn’t go up. Also starting from baseline the humidity dropped much more quickly to 16% from the bottle

I’ll try it again with a analog humidity meter
 
Aviation oxygen used for high altitudes MUST be moisture-free. Any moisture in the O2 could cause aviation oxygen systems to freeze up due to the low temperatures involved.

Medical O2 typically has moisture added to prevent drying of the nasal and breathing passages. Using medical O2 for flight could have catastrophic results if the systems froze up due to the added moisture.


“The Compressed Gas Association establishes grading standards for both gaseous oxygen and liquid oxygen based on the amount and type of impurities present. Gas grades are called Type I and range from A, which is 99.0% pure, to F, which is 99.995% pure. Liquid grades are called Type II and also range from A to F, although the types and amounts of allowable impurities in liquid grades are different than in gas grades. Type I Grade B and Grade C and Type II Grade C are 99.5% pure and are the most commonly produced grades of oxygen. They are used in steel making and in the manufacture of synthetic chemicals.”

All Oxygen produced in cryogenic plants is the same purity because it is cheaper to produce one grade and test it to the highest standard rather than trying to store and sort marginally different purity gas.
 
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If there was significant moisture in the output of the concentrator, which I don't believe there is, it would be streaming out of the compressor in some fashion as there is no user accessible water trap.
Unless it goes into the tank, which is the whole issue here.

Again, this is in the crew compartment. My plane's heat works. There isn't significant cooling on the concentrator assembly or value when in use (this is a pulse system).
No argument there, but you can still get things iced up just based on the expansion of the gas.
In fact, Civil Aviation does have a MSOG option now. The Inogen G2 aviator Certified to 18,000 feet using identical technology. That's how this whole thing started with me. At least in the used market, the homefill is a far cheaper solution that I can share with my passengers.

http://www.inogenaviator.com/products.html

But stay tuned, I'll measure and post how much the unit dehumidfies later tonight.
I'm familiar with that unit. But again, that's completely different than running a generator ON THE GROUND and compressing the bottle ON THE GROUND and then expanding it IN THE AIR.
 
But again, that's completely different than running a generator ON THE GROUND and compressing the bottle ON THE GROUND and then expanding it IN THE AIR.

I thought that was the whole discussion here, run a concentrator at home to fill the bottles, then go fly. This had occurred to me a while back, but I didn't know how well it would work.

Trying to concentrate oxygen out of thinner air at altitude strikes me as ludicrous . . . . .
 
The temp doesn’t have to be below freezing. As the gas expands it lowers the temp.

That’s right.

Compressed gas cools a lot when it expands. A cylinder at room temperature is like a refrigerator in wait.

As an example, a CO2 fire extinguisher at room temperature can chill beer — the gas is compressed in the tank, it cools when it expands as it come out. Lots of amusing Youtube videos of this. The same would happen with oxygen, although I would not recommend smoking.
 
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Trying to concentrate oxygen out of thinner air at altitude strikes me as ludicrous . . . . .

Relative to the pressures used in the concentrator, the drop at altitude is minor.
 
The adsorbent beds of a pressure swing adsorption (PSA) column are capable of removing water vapor down to a few ppm. That water accumulates on the adsorbent during the production stage of the PSA cycle as ambient air is fed to the column, nitrogen and the other non-oxygen components are adsorbed, and concentrated oxygen is produced. That cycle continues until some of the non-oxygen constituents show up in the product. When that happens the pressure in the column is released by allowing gas to escape from the inlet end of the column. This reduction in pressure causes the bulk of the adsorbed non-oxygen gases (including the water vapor) to desorb from the adsorbent so that its adsorption capacity is restored. When that is completed the column is repressurized with air again and concentrated oxygen is again produced. A system will commonly contain 2 or more adsorbent columns if a continuous flow of product oxygen is needed (so that one column is always producing oxygen while the other(s) are in regeneration). A single column design can also produce product continuously by feeding the product oxygen to a pressurized holding tank from which oxygen may be drawn even when the adsorbent column is in regeneration and not producing oxygen. A single column system can also appear to be operating continuously if the cycles are run for very brief times (pulses) such that the saturation point is kept within the bed and simply shifts back and forth a short distance between cycles (pulses).

Even if the adsorbent did not remove water from the gases, product oxygen at 1500 psi is very dry simply as the result of its pressurization. At common ambient temperatures water condenses whenever the partial pressure of water vapor exceeds about 0.02 atmospheres (round numbers, warmer temperatures will make it higher and lower temperatures reduce it, but 0.02 atmospheres is close enough for this analysis). Worst case the air that is used to produce the oxygen is saturated with water vapor at 1 atmosphere total pressure (i.e., it contains about 0.02 atmosphere partial pressure of water vapor). The act of compressing that air up to 1500 psi increases its pressure by about 100x (1 atmosphere is about 15 psi). That means that the water vapor that was originally at 0.02 atmosphere partial pressure is now at 2 atmospheres (100 x 0.02). But anything above 0.02 atmospheres would condense as liquid water and be removed from the system by a blowdown valve or some other mechanism. The resulting compressed gas now only contains about 1% as much water vapor as it had initially (0.02/2). When the pressure of the gas is reduced from 1500 psi back down to 1 atmosphere or 15 psi (or less in an airplane) by the regulator, the partial pressure of water vapor, which was 0.02 atmosphere, is reduced 100x down to a very dry 0.0002 atmosphere.

Also, while compressed gas cools as it is depressurized, the rate of gas delivery in a typical airplane oxygen system is so low that heat transfer from the ambient environment warms it to ambient temperatures before it has a chance to freeze anything. That system that cools beer using a fire extinguisher is probably delivering hundreds of cubic feet of CO2 GAS per minute. That CO2 is also stored as a liquid in the fire extinguisher (CO2 liquifies when pressurized). So the adiabatic heat of vaporization also contributes to its cooling capability).

As for the humidistat only reading 16% humidity when purged with the systems oxygen, I expect that the meter is not designed to operate accurately down to the low moisture contents of that oxygen. It's not capable of indicating lower. Something like a chilled mirror sensor might work, but even then the dew point (actually the frost point) of the oxygen is probably so low that it might challenge the capability of the mirror cooling system to cool the mirror down to the condensation point of water in that gas.

The oxygen produced by the OPs system will work just fine in the plane presuming that he has a regulator that fits the bottle and is capable of delivering air at the prescribed rate into a varying ambient pressure. It might require that oxygen flows be bumped up about 10% compared to cyrogenic oxygen to compensate for the ca. 10% lower purity of system oxygen relative to cyrogenic oxygen (90% vs. 99%). But otherwise it will be fine.
 
Great post bksperop and thanks for confirming most of my suspicions.

The oxygen produced by the OPs system will work just fine in the plane presuming that he has a regulator that fits the bottle and is capable of delivering air at the prescribed rate into a varying ambient pressure. It might require that oxygen flows be bumped up about 10% compared to cyrogenic oxygen to compensate for the ca. 10% lower purity of system oxygen relative to cyrogenic oxygen (90% vs. 99%). But otherwise it will be fine.

I used it today on a flight and it worked great. Was just at 9000 feet but for 1.5 hours I would have been fatigued and felt great (and the plus ox confirmed it was doing it's thing). Used the M6 bottle and less then 25% used,
 
And who can argue with that. NOT ME.
 
Great post bksperop and thanks for confirming most of my suspicions.
I used it today on a flight and it worked great. Was just at 9000 feet but for 1.5 hours I would have been fatigued and felt great (and the plus ox confirmed it was doing it's thing). Used the M6 bottle and less then 25% used,

You're welcome, and enjoy the bargain.
 
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