Liquid oxygen

This article is about the liquid form of the element oxygen. For the commercial product, see Liquid Oxygen (supplement).

"LOX" redirects here. For other uses, see Lox (disambiguation).

The blue colour of liquid oxygen in a dewar flask

Liquid oxygen — abbreviated LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industries — is one of the physical forms of elemental oxygen.

Physical properties

Liquid oxygen has a pale blue color and is strongly paramagnetic and can be suspended between the poles of a powerful horseshoe magnet.^[1] Liquid oxygen has a density of 1.141 g/cm³ (1.141 kg/L) and is cryogenic with a freezing point of 50.5 K (−368.77  °F; −222.65 °C) and a boiling point of 90.19 K (−297.33 °F, −182.96 °C) at 101.325 kPa (760 mmHg). Liquid oxygen has an expansion ratio of 1:861 at 20 °C (68 °F);^[2][3] and because of this, it is used in some commercial and military aircraft as a source of breathing oxygen.

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 often exhibit this behavior, including asphalt.

The tetraoxygen molecule (O₄) was first predicted in 1924 by Gilbert N. Lewis, who proposed it as an explanation for the failure of liquid oxygen to obey Curie's law.^[4] 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.^[5]

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 material. Conversely, liquid nitrogen or liquid air can be oxygen-enriched by letting it stand in open air; atmospheric oxygen dissolves in it, while nitrogen evaporates preferentially.

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.

Liquid oxygen is a common liquid oxidizer propellant for spacecraft rocket applications, usually in combination with liquid hydrogen or kerosene. Liquid oxygen is useful in this role because it creates a high specific impulse. It was used in the very first rocket applications like the V2 missile (under the name A-Stoff and Sauerstoff) and Redstone, R-7 Semyorka, Atlas boosters, and the ascent stages of the Apollo Saturn rockets. Liquid oxygen was also used in some early ICBMs, although more modern ICBMs do not use liquid oxygen because its cryogenic properties and need for regular replenishment to replace boiloff make it harder to maintain and launch quickly. Many modern rockets use liquid oxygen, including the main engines on the Space Shuttle.

Liquid oxygen also had extensive use in making oxyliquit explosives, but is rarely used now due to a high rate of accidents.

History

• By 1845, Michael Faraday had managed to liquefy most permanent gases then known to exist. Six gases, however, resisted every attempt at liquefaction^[6] 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 (1832–1913) in France and Raoul Pictet (1846–1929) in Switzerland succeeded in producing the first droplets of liquid air.
• The first measurable quantity of liquid oxygen was produced by Polish professors Zygmunt Wróblewski and Karol Olszewski (Jagiellonian University in Kraków) on April 5, 1883.

See also

• Cryogenics
• Karol Olszewski and Zygmunt Florenty Wróblewski
• Liquid hydrogen
• Liquid helium
• Liquid nitrogen
• List of Stoffs
• Natterer compressor
• Rocket fuel
• Solid oxygen
• Tetraoxygen

References

1. ^ John W. Moore; Conrad L. Stanitski; Peter C. Jurs (21 January 2009). Principles of Chemistry: The Molecular Science. Cengage Learning. pp. 297–. ISBN 9780495390794. http://books.google.com/books?id=ZOm8L9oCwLMC&pg=PA297. Retrieved 3 April 2011. 
2. ^ Cryogenic Safety
3. ^ Characteristics
4. ^ 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. 
5. ^ Oda, Tatsuki; Alfredo Pasquarello (2004). "Noncollinear magnetism in liquid oxygen: A first-principles molecular dynamics study". Physical Review B 70 (134402): 1–19. Bibcode 2004PhRvB..70m4402O. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.70.134402. 
6. ^ Cryogenics