Component analysis of enriched oxygen gas from
a small-size PSA medical oxygen generator
Zhu Lu, Chen Ping, Deng Cheng, You Xiu-dong, Su Hong-bo, Yuan Ying-hai, Zhu Meng-fu
(Institute of Medical Equipment, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Tianjin 300161, China)
Abstract—This paper studied on the component of enriched
oxygen gas from a self-developed small-size PSA medical
oxygen generator. Through gas chromatography each
concentration group of oxygen, nitrogen, argon, carbon
dioxide and total hydrocarbon with different outlet flow was
investigated, and the fluctuation of each group during
continuous operation of 48 h was also measured. The result
showed that the key factor to constrain the increase of oxygen
purity was micro argon in the air, which can reach to 5.1101%
in oxygen-rich gas and didn’t change with the variation of
zeolite utilization or the increase of operating time, indicating
the invalid of current molecular sieve materials. Another
major gas nitrogen declined significantly with the
improvement of the molecular sieve utilization, which was only
account for 0.4643%. Other trace amount of impurity gas such
as total hydrocarbon and carbon dioxide were only in ppm
level.
Keywords—PSA, Oxygen generator, Nitrogen, Argon,
Carbon Dioxide
I. INTRODUCTION
With the improvement of medical treatment in our
country, medical oxygen generator has been gradually
recognized and accepted by large and medium hospitals. It
overcomes the problems and hidden dangers of bottle
oxygen and liquid oxygen, and has been an important part
of hospital’s central oxygen supply project. On the other
hand, as people pay more and more attention to their health,
the use of small-size medical oxygen generator at home also
spring up, and has shown a strong increasing trend. Because
both the cryogenic air separation method and
electrochemical method need complex process, large area
for equipment and high cost, the medical oxygen generator
at present mainly adopt the medical molecular sieve
pressure swing adsorption method (PSA) [1-3]. This
technique is based on some characteristics of adsorbent
(molecular sieve), which has different adsorption capacity
to various components in the air and this adsorption
capacity changes with the variation of pressure, so that by
periodic pressure changes it achieves the separation or
purification of gas[4]. Conventional PSA method can obtain
93%r3% oxygen gas. This oxygen purity measured up the
industry standard of oxygen making machine [5], however
M. Long (Ed.): World Congress on Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, IFMBE Proceedings 39, pp. 773–776, 2013.
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the mandatory national standard, “Oxygen supplies for
medicine and aircraft breathing” published in 2009,
stipulated the oxygen conte nt must be not less than 99.5%
[6]. “Chinese Pharmacopoeia” of 2010 edition also required
oxygen content must be not less than 99.5% (ml/ml) [7]. In
fact high purity oxygen is very necessary for patients to
surgery and postoperative recovery [8]. To further improve
the oxygen content, firstly we need to precisely determine
the component of enriched oxygen gas group from the
current medical oxygen generator, in order to find the key
factor to constrain the increase of oxygen purity. Therefore,
in this paper we investigated the enriched oxygen gas from
self-developed PSA-10A medical oxygen generator by gas
chromatography (GC).
II. EQUIPMENTS AND METHODS
A. Equipments
Oxygen making equipment used in the experiment was
self-developed PSA-10A type of PSA oxygen generator.
Gas chromatograph analyzer was GC-9310 type of
Shanghai Instrument Co, Ltd.
B. Methods
Firstly, we warmed up the oxygen generator for 1 h.
Then we opened the switch of GC carrier gas, burning gas
and assistant combustion gas, after 30min started GC
analyzer and calibrated the instrument with a standard gas.
The standard gas contains 0.72% argon, 6.23% nitrogen,
294×10-6 methane, 295×10-6 carbon monoxide, 296×10-6
carbon dioxide and oxygen rest. The standard gas curve was
shown in figure 1(a) and 1(b). The retention times of 0.11
min, 0.45 min, 1.05 min and 2.57 min were corresponding
to the peak of total hydrocarbon, carbon monoxide, methane
and carbon dioxide in figure 1(a). The retention times of
1.19 min and 1.39 min were corresponding to the peak of
argon and nitrogen in figure 1(b). Each retention time had a
10% near time band which was also calculated as the
corresponding peak.
774 Z. Lu et al.

After accurate calibration, we began to measure the Table 1 was the concentration of each group in enriched
product gas of oxygen generator. First, we took a 1L rubber oxygen gas with different outlet flow. Table 2 was the
bag on the outlet of machine to fully collect the gas and then concentration of each group during the continuously
released them all by hand compression, and then recollected. running time of 48h.
Repeated this process three times to ensure there was no
residue air in the rubber bag before test. Then recollected
the product gas again, sealed the rubber bag, and went for IV. DISCUSSION
GC test. Before injected the gas into GC analyzer, hermetic
joined the outlet of rubber bag and the inlet of GC analyzer A. The influence of nitrogen
to ensure no air infiltration, and then gently squeezed the
rubber bag to make trace amount of gas slowly flow into Experiment showed that although nitrogen was the most
GC analyzer. Figure 1(c) and (d) showed the test curve of abundant gas in the air, about 78% volume fraction, the
oxygen-rich gas with 8 L/min outlet flow after oxygen adsorptive separation of molecular sieves can greatly reduce
machine continuously ran 1 h. Contrasting to the standard the proportion of nitrogen in oxygen-rich gas. Moreover, we
gas curve, we can find that there were two signal peaks at can further decline the nitrogen content to 0.5% or less by
0.11 min and 2.57 min in figure 1(c), indicating the reducing outlet flow to improve the utilization of molecular
existence of total hydrocarbon and carbon dioxide, and sieves. However the impact of nitrogen will be gradually
there were two signal peaks at 1.12 min and 1.31 min in reinforced with prolongation of running time because of the
figure 1(d), indicating the existence of argon and nitrogen in failure of molecular sieves.
oxygen-rich gas. After qualitative analysis, we determined Nitrogen content changed with the variation of outlet
the content of each impurity group through signal intensity. flow, as shown in Table 1. In fact we can change the
utilization of molecular sieves by regulating the outlet flow.
The outlet flow was smaller, and the utilization of molecular
III. RESULTS sieves was greater, since molecular sieves in the tower had
more time to contact with the air, resulting in better
The experiment data showed in Table 1 and Table 2. adsorption separation. Nitrogen content was account for

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Fig.1 Chromatographic curve for PSA oxygen generator

IFMBE Proceedings Vol. 39