2/1/23, 9:07 AM Liquid oxygen - Wikipedia

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1Physical properties
2Uses

2.1In rocket propellant

3History
4See also

5References

Liquid oxygen
Liquid oxygen—abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries—is the liquid form of molecular
oxygen. It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard,[1] an application which has
continued to the present.

Physical properties
Liquid oxygen has a pale blue color and is strongly paramagnetic: it can be suspended between the poles of a powerful horseshoe
magnet.[2] Liquid oxygen has a density of 1.141 kg/L (1.141 g/ml), slightly denser than liquid water, and is cryogenic with a freezing point
of 54.36  K (−218.79  °C; −361.82  °F) and a boiling point of 90.19  K (−182.96  °C; −297.33  °F) at 1  bar (15  psi). Liquid oxygen has an
expansion ratio of 1:861 under 1 standard atmosphere (100  kPa) and 20  °C (68  °F),[3][4] and because of this, it is used in some
commercial and military aircraft as a transportable source of breathing oxygen.

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Because of its cryogenic nature, liquid oxygen can cause the materials it touches to become
extremely brittle. Liquid oxygen is also a very powerful oxidizing agent: organic materials will burn
rapidly and energetically in liquid oxygen. Further, if soaked in liquid oxygen, some materials such
as coal briquettes, carbon black, etc., can detonate unpredictably from sources of ignition such as
flames, sparks or impact from light blows. Petrochemicals, including asphalt, often exhibit this
behavior.[5]

The tetraoxygen molecule (O4) was first predicted in 1924 by Gilbert N. Lewis, who proposed it to
explain why liquid oxygen defied Curie's law.[6] Modern computer simulations indicate that,
although there are no stable O4 molecules in liquid oxygen, O2 molecules do tend to associate in
pairs with antiparallel spins, forming transient O4 units.[7]

Liquid nitrogen has a lower boiling point at −196 °C (77 K) than oxygen's −183 °C (90 K), and vessels
containing liquid nitrogen can condense oxygen from air: when most of the nitrogen has evaporated
from such a vessel, there is a risk that liquid oxygen remaining can react violently with organic
Liquid oxygen (pale blue liquid) in a
material. Conversely, liquid nitrogen or liquid air can be oxygen-enriched by letting it stand in open
beaker.
air; atmospheric oxygen dissolves in it, while nitrogen evaporates preferentially.

The surface tension of liquid oxygen at its normal pressure boiling point is 13.2 dyn/cm.[8]

Uses
In commerce, liquid oxygen is classified as an industrial gas and is widely used for industrial and
medical purposes. Liquid oxygen is obtained from the oxygen found naturally in air by fractional
distillation in a cryogenic air separation plant.

Air forces have long recognized the strategic importance of liquid oxygen, both as an oxidizer and as
a supply of gaseous oxygen for breathing in hospitals and high-altitude aircraft flights. In 1985, the When liquid oxygen is poured from
USAF started a program of building its own oxygen-generation facilities at all major consumption a beaker into a strong magnet, the
bases.[9][10] oxygen is temporarily suspended
between the magnet poles, owing to
its paramagnetism.
In rocket propellant

Liquid oxygen is the most common cryogenic liquid oxidizer propellant for spacecraft rocket applications, usually in combination with
liquid hydrogen, kerosene or methane.[11][12]

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Liquid oxygen was used in the first liquid fueled rocket. The World War II V-2 missile also used
liquid oxygen under the name A-Stoff and Sauerstoff. In the 1950s, during the Cold War both the
United States' Redstone and Atlas rockets, and the Soviet R-7 Semyorka used liquid oxygen. Later, in
the 1960s and 1970s, the ascent stages of the Apollo Saturn rockets, and the Space Shuttle main
engines used liquid oxygen.

In 2020, many rockets used liquid oxygen:

Chinese space program: Long March 5, and its derivations Long March 6, Long March 7
A U.S. Air Force technician transfers
Indian Space Research Organisation: GSLV liquid oxygen to a Lockheed Martin
JAXA (Japan): H-IIA and H3 (under development) C-130J Super Hercules aircraft at
Roscosmos (Russia): Soyuz-2 and Angara (under development) the Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan.
ESA (EU): Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 (under development)
Korea Aerospace Research Institute (South Korea): KSLV-1 and KSLV-II
United States
SpaceX: Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy and Starship (under development) (liquid oxygen chilled to
−207 °C (−340.6 °F; 66.1 K), 10% denser 1,250 g/L (1.25 g/ml)[13] than at boiling
temperature)
United Launch Alliance: Atlas V, Delta IV, Delta IV Heavy, Vulcan (under development)
Northrop Grumman: Antares 230+
Blue Origin: New Shepard and New Glenn (under development)
Rocket Lab: Electron
Firefly Aerospace: Firefly Alpha
Virgin Orbit: LauncherOne SpaceX's liquid oxygen ball at Cape
Canaveral

History
By 1845, Michael Faraday had managed to liquefy most gases then known to exist. Six gases, however, resisted every attempt at
liquefaction[14] and were known at the time as "permanent gases". They were oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon monoxide,
methane, and nitric oxide.
In 1877, Louis Paul Cailletet in France and Raoul Pictet in Switzerland succeeded in producing the first droplets of liquid air.

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In 1883, Polish professors Zygmunt Wróblewski and Karol Olszewski produced the first measurable quantity of liquid oxygen.

See also
Oxygen storage List of Stoffs
Industrial gas Natterer compressor
Cryogenics Rocket fuel
Liquid hydrogen Solid oxygen
Liquid helium Tetraoxygen
Liquid nitrogen

References
1. "First liquid-fueled rocket" (https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-liquid-fueled-rocket). HISTORY. Retrieved 2019-03-16.
2. Moore, John W.; Stanitski, Conrad L.; Jurs, Peter C. (21 January 2009). Principles of Chemistry: The Molecular Science (https://boo
ks.google.com/books?id=ZOm8L9oCwLMC&pg=PA297). Cengage Learning. pp. 297–. ISBN 978-0-495-39079-4. Retrieved 3 April
2011.
3. Cryogenic Safety (https://web.archive.org/web/20080607160832/http://www.chemistry.ohio-state.edu/ehs/handbook/gases/cryosafe.
htm). chemistry.ohio-state.edu.
4. Characteristics (http://www.lindecanada.com/en/aboutboc/safety/cryogenic_liquids/characteristics.php). Archived (https://web.archiv
e.org/web/20120218125124/http://www.lindecanada.com/en/aboutboc/safety/cryogenic_liquids/characteristics.php) 2012-02-18 at
the Wayback Machine. Lindecanada.com. Retrieved on 2012-07-22.
5. "Liquid Oxygen Receipt, Handling, Storage and Disposal" (https://archive.org/details/23004LiquidOxygenReceiptTransferStorageDis
posal). USAF Training Film.
6. Lewis, Gilbert N. (1924). "The Magnetism of Oxygen and the Molecule O2". Journal of the American Chemical Society. 46 (9):
2027–2032. doi:10.1021/ja01674a008 (https://doi.org/10.1021%2Fja01674a008).
7. Oda, Tatsuki; Alfredo Pasquarello (2004). "Noncollinear magnetism in liquid oxygen: A first-principles molecular dynamics study" (htt
ps://kanazawa-u.repo.nii.ac.jp/?action=repository_uri&item_id=10177). Physical Review B. 70 (134402): 1–19.
Bibcode:2004PhRvB..70m4402O (https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004PhRvB..70m4402O). doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.70.134402 (h
ttps://doi.org/10.1103%2FPhysRevB.70.134402). hdl:2297/3462 (https://hdl.handle.net/2297%2F3462). S2CID 123535786 (https://a
pi.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:123535786).
8. J. M. Jurns and J. W. Hartwig (2011). Liquid Oxygen Liquid Acquisition Device Bubble Point Tests With High Pressure LOX at
Elevated Temperatures (https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20110014531.pdf), p. 4.
9. Arnold, Mark. 1U.S. Army Oxygen Generation System Development (https://web.archive.org/web/20170315000548/http://www.dtic.
mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA581789). RTO-MP-HFM-182. dtic.mil

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