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OT medical oxygen vs the oxygen in your oxy acetylene rig

What is Medical Oxygen? – Air-source Blog

Pretty much as you'd expect - much higher purity in the medical Oxy, so your friend may want to re-think what he's doing.

Most of what is in that website is misdirecting. I talked to the guys that fill both medical and industrial cylinders and they said the same oxygen fills both. The BIG difference is that the med cylinder is vacuum purged then filled and dumped (or the other way around), then filled and sealed. When they fill an industrial type the operator cracks the valve and sniffs it to make sure nothing has back filled it.

Ed.
 
Back in the day,.......... on two occasions, the common or garden BOC Oxygen bottle on my old service van ''saved'' new born calves that according to the vets and very experienced cattlemen etc present, would not have otherwise ''made it''

Questionable purity or not, .......any port in a storm.
 
About 40 years ago during a severe bout with asthma I breathed industrial oxygen for about 3 weeks. There were no apparent ill effects. I am 83 now.
 
Our welding supplier pumps down all gas bottles before filling them, and it comes from the same bulk liquid oxygen delivery.

I doubt there is any concern with contaminants.
 
This is a guess. The only difference is the traceability, possibly some differences in the way it is handled. Chances are it's safer to breath than normal "shop" air.

On that note we set up a regenerative blower for our sand blasting operators. No filters needed (we did put an inlet filter though), better airflow, no hit to compressor CFM, and no heating of the air (though we are going to add a heater/cooler unit for comfort). I did use normal compressor air as a test and it sucked ass.

We also have a dessicant dryer delivering class 1 air and we were warned not to use it for breathing air because it will dry you out so bad.
 
I once asked BOC for a bottle of 'dry' nitrogen (as specified by a marine instrument company) the sales guy responded...

"I can assure you sir, that our nitrogen bottles contain only nitrogen"

I guess they say the same for the 02 ...

In the 1970's At BOC's Tunnel Avenue depot (South London) they checked and ''evacuated'' (by vacuum) all bottles before filling
 
I had a welding instructor who insisted that the bulk oxygen used at the bridge/steel yard he worked at was as good or >better than the medical oxygen.

Medical was more expensive due to Certification.
 
There’s not much difference between industrial and medical, gets finicky with lab grade or analytical, 99.5 goes up to 99.9, but that tiny increase is mighty expensive plus as stated the certification
The industrial tanker was delivering to the hospital when I was in,
Mark
 
Over my time at the hospital (I'm an RRT), I ran into a number of Amish who used weld grade O2 for breathing; no negative effects noted.
That said, my preference would be not to make a practice of it.

Any scuba divers care to weigh in WRT the air they use in their bottles?
 
For the super lab grade stuff I understood the tanks were sterilized at some point. Maybe just for the first fill and then only if they ever ran out and had air inside with possible micro organism growth inside. We did have several nazi Helium or hydrogen, can't remember which, mix tanks around.
Bil lD
 
Part of my backup plan for this past year was making sure I always had a full oxy cylinder, being rural it can take 30 minutes on a good day to get help, just in case, and its not like its going to go to waste:).
 
When the corona virus was first getting going not knowing what to expect I had 2 welding oxygen cylinders filled. I put them in the house garage and Found a good regulator and the proper tubing. I showed wife how to use it if one of us got sick. Thought it might ease the pain while dying. So far no problems here.
 








 
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