what is liquid oxygen and what is it used for?

Question

i saw a giant tank of it outside a hospital building and it struck my cuirosity.

Answer 1

Liquid oxygen is oxygen in liquid form. It is used in hospitals as a mix gas by anesthesiologists. The pure oxygen is mixed with other gases that put you to sleep because without oxygen you would die. It is liquid because they compress it (cool it) until it changes into a liquid state. It makes it possible to keep more oxygen in a smaller container. That means less trips for more o2. Some think it is used more for cryogenic storage but that is usually not the case at hospitals. It is highly flammable and not very safe for use as a storage medium. Liquid nitrogen is usually used for that. On a side note, the bottle you saw it stored in is just like a thermos you would use for coffee or a cold beverage. It is basically a big insulated bottle with a lot of plumbing in it.

Answer 2

You would need amounts that are orders of magnitude greater than we can supply. Plus, as someone pointed out, the net change would be zero since you're just following a closed path. Taking oxygen gas in Los Angeles and liquifying it would require great amount of refrigeration energy. Transportation to New Orleans under high pressures and refrigerated pipes would be dangerous, costly, and inefficient. Some might say that the idea is good only it's impractical. I say it's not good either because it's highly highly counterproductive. The efficiency of cooling is never ideal and always requires work. You will release more heat into the atmosphere in this manner than any benefits you might obtain. You stop one hurricane but you provide a multitude of thermal energy to the atmosphere that will churn up maybe a hundred hurricanes... The production of liquid oxygen will release carbon dioxide into the air, in that all machinery requires either electricity, gas, oil, or some sort of chemical energy that's grown using fossil fuels. It's transportation will require even more. Cooling an ocean cannot be contemplated. Leaving the planet is actually more feasible.

Answer 3

Liquid is one of the 3 states of matter... they are gas, solid and liquid. Any element can exist in any of these forms given the conditions are right. One of these conditions is pressure, another is temperature. When a gas, such as oxygen, is subjected to huge pressure it becomes "liquefied". Liquefied gas is much easier to store in vast amounts as a liquid. As soon as its subjected or released into the atmosphere, liquid oxygen becomes a gas again.... instantly. So... liquid oxygen is simply the best form to store oxygen for patient use at a hospital, if the same amount of oxygen were to be kept in non-pressurized gas form.... it would litter ally fill blimps and blimps and blimps that would then hover around the hospital.... pretty annoying I'm sure... hope that helped.

Answer 4

I love liquid oxygen it is really cool. It's slightly bluish and paramagnetic so if you've got a powerful magnet you can make it levitate and it looks really neat.
Liquid oxygen is the liquid form of oxygen. It has a boiling point of around 80-90K at 1bar of pressure so it means you can condense it from the air using liquid nitrogen (bp=77K). It's extremely explosive (jet fuel applications and so forth). As far as the hospital goes they use it to supply oxygen to the patients by boiling it off and piping it in. Pressurised in it's liquid form it's much more space efficient then using a whole lot of bottles.

Answer 5

Liquid Oxygen is what is sounds like: Oxygen in its liquid form, between -219 and -183 degrees Farenheit.

The most common use for LOX is rocket fuel, as it burns incredibly rapidly. It is also used to store things at cryogenic temperatures; it is commonly used at sperm banks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_oxygen

Answer 6

it is just liquified oxygen. it is stored like that because of how dence liquid oxygen is. it is much easier to store 10,000 cubic feet worth of oxygen gas if you store it in liquid form and let it evaporate into gas form. if you look closser you should see a large set of heat sinks( a pipe with fins on it) to let the oxygen warm up before it is piped into the hospital. in order to make liquid oxygen you must cool it way down and compress it. when it is relesed it becomes very cold (like when you open a cold carbonated drink and it freezes over)

they do the same thing with natural gas. they call it LNG (liquid natural gas)

Answer 7

Liquid oxygen is used for lighting grills, among other things already mentioned. Check it out.

Answer 8

THEY USE IT FOR CUTTING STEEL WHEN MIXED WITH PROPANE OR CETALEAN, TORCHES LIKE IN JUNK YARDS SCRAP YARDS ECT. IT ALSO CONSTANLEY LEAKS OFF GAS FORM

Answer 9

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_oxygen