Is there any difference between a tank of welding oxygen vs medical oxygen as far as purity, concentration, hazardous impurities, etc, that would render welding oxygen insufficient (or even dangerous) for helping to supplement breathing / respiration ?
Nope, they are the same. I see the paramedics at the welding supply store all the time, getting their bottles filled from the same rack mine are.
MikeB
And just to be clear -
Welding oxygen is more (way more) than just compressed "air". And what I mean by "air" is the stuff that's all around us right now.
Yes?
To be precise it is way less. The air we breath is roughly twenty percent oxygen. Medical oxygen is nearly one hundred percent oxygen. The inert components of air are removed from the compressed oxygen that is used for patient breathing assistance and making ordinary metals burn and melt together into a single piece of metal.
-- Tom Horne
Yes there is a difference according to my first aid training (years ago). You can use in the case of emergency. It is IIRC too dry to use for extended periods (I should have paid more attention to that discussion).
Harry K
They *can* be the same depending on the store. Welding grade isn't safe for medical use. Stores often stock only medical grade instead of maintaining multiple grades.
Certification. Medical oxygen has to be certified to a certain purity, welding does not. You pay for that test and the potential liability that goes along with it.
And what I meant by "way more" was that welding oxygen has a higher oxygen content (or oxygen concentration) vs ordinary air. So I don't know why you'd say it's "way less".
And likewise for weld> Yes there is a difference according to my first aid training (years
From what I've been reading tonight, ALL forms of compressed oxygen (Aviation, Medical, Welding) come from the SAME source (a tank of Liquid Oxygen - LOX) and are transfered to variously labelled tanks and charged various prices based on the label on the tank.
My guess is that the price differential is caused by liability insurance and the need to recoup that cost based on the end-use of the gas. The insurance industry might perceive that aviation oxygen (as a product) carries the highest risk to the producer / seller, with medical oxygen less risky, and welding oxygen the lowest risk. Risk in this context means what sort of incident could happen if the wrong gas is accidentially sold to the end user, or could happen if the tank fails.
The humidity of compressed oxygen seems to be a red herring. In medical situations such as the hospital bedside, oxygen supply lines are passed through a bubbler or some other humidification device to add humidity to the air. This is a stationary situation where the person is likely to be on the air supply for an extended period, and humidification is done more for comfort or to prevent airway irritation than anything else. In other medical situations (EMS O2 respirator tanks) the air is dry - because it simply can't supply O2 for an extended period anyways.
And you don't want to get water in your high-pressure tanks anyways - if only so they don't rust.
Aviation air also can't contain a lot of humidity because (or so the story goes) the water could freeze at high altitudes and mess up the supply and metering lines.
So the bottom line is that if you walk into a welding supply store to buy an oxygen tank, don't let on that you intend to use it to fill your plane's on-board tank, or you want to make an oxygen tent for your sick pet. The guy behind the counter will most likely go ape-shit and either deny your purchase, or force you to buy the more expensive tank - probably because their insurance company forces them to do that.
The insurance industry plays a far larger role behind the scenes in our daily lives than we realize. The products we can buy, the services we use, the way they are delivered or sold to us, etc, exist because the manufacterers, retails or providers have reached a stable (perhaps even strained) coexistance with the insurance industry.
Are you aware of any impurities that are present in the generation of bulk O2 that are specifically removed when "medical" grade O2 is created?
Even welding supply stores will stock only "medical grade" oxygen?
You people might want to read this:
How exactly can compressed oxygen be "impure" ?
Are some oxygen molecules more pure than other oxygen molecules?
Or does the Medical oxygen tank look nicer and cleaner than the Welding oxygen tank?
I think you pay more for medical and aviation O2 because the consequences can be more expensive if there is a problem with the product (the product being compressed oxygen). The product itself is no more expensive or different or has any additional processing steps done to it on the basis of it's sale in it's variously-labelled forms.
The content of bottled oxygen is not 100% pure. It is 99.xxx% pure. That other tiny amount can be anything in the atmosphere or it can be some contaminant from the bottle. I used to work with medical oxygen and every batch had a certification giving the purity.
That is what I just said above.
It has a step that does not have to be taken with welding oxygen. Certification. O2 tanks have been contaminated in the past. Rare, but it has happened. Filling my own tanks, I'd not be concerned about using welding oxygen, but I'm not so quick to grab a tank off the back of a truck at a job site and start breathing it. If you get the certification with welding grade, then it is the same. That piece of paper is worth a lot of money if there ever was a problem.
I buy lots of oxygen from the welding store and the label always says USP grade. I have never seen any other kind. The answer is on the label tho.
wrote
That is because the oxygen itself it USP grade. One difference I forgot to mention. Filling procedure. You can fill a welding grade bottle by making the connection, opening the valve, and filling. When filling medical bottles, they must be emptied, hooked to a vacuum pump and evacuated, then filled.
Welding grade can be used in many ways by many different people. You can hook it to a manifold along with other gasses. If the cylinder pressure drops below what other gas on that manifold it, it can be back-fed some of the other gas and contaminated.
FWIW, all oxygen is too dry for extended period use. That is why they run it through the little bottle thingy first in medical uses. Also, if you believe in eHow.com
Which means that the Plaintiff lawyers play a far larger role, since most of the insurance company's concerns has to do with keeping the PL out of their pocket.
No, but other gasses can be introduced. Even the compressors for the regular air firefighters have to be carefully maintained. Oils, etc., can be introduced that cause failure of the seals. There are many things that can go wrong, although that is more of a conern with how the tank is filled.
At least for medical oxygen you pay more because the tests and tracking requirements of medical oxygen is more expensive. These are additional processing steps (at least the testing and certification). The O2 is probably not more expensive, but the medical part is.
Seems like my dad had a machine that created (or condensed) oxygen from the air for him to breath. No bottles to change. Why can't they do that for welding?
"LSMFT" wrote
Oxygen concentrators remove the nitrogen and leave you with about 93% oxygen. It has no pressure though, and it would still have to be pressurized to about 10 psi to work for welding. Probably not impossible, just not practical.
Next time watch the significant difference on how medical use vs other tanks are filled. Any medical use tanks are first evacuated to insure there is nothing else in the tank before it is filled.
I imagine because it can't supply oxygen at the rate required for welding.
I see a lot of people getting these machines:
As for original question, industrial oxygen should be suitable for breathing. All compressed oxygen must be free of impurities like oil because of potential for explosion.
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