Oxygen is the substance that organisms on Earth depend on for survival, it is easy to chemically react with other substances to produce oxides, and a lot of heat will be generated in the oxidation reaction process. Therefore, oxygen is widely used in life, metallurgy, chemical industry, energy, machinery, national defense industry and other sectors. The following small series will give you a brief introduction to the use of oxygen.

Properties of Oxygen

Oxygen is a colorless, odorless gas that is not easily soluble in water, denser than air, supports combustion, and the solid state is light blue. It is easy to chemically react with other substances to produce oxides, and a lot of heat is generated during the oxidation reaction.

Use of Oxygen

1. In the steelmaking process to blow high purity oxygen, oxygen and carbon and phosphorus, sulfur, silicon and other oxidation reaction, which not only reduces the carbon content of steel, but also conducive to the removal of phosphorus, sulfur, silicon and other impurities. The heat generated is enough to maintain the temperature required for the steelmaking process, reducing the smelting time while improving the quality of the steel. In blast furnace ironmaking, increasing oxygen concentration in blast air can reduce coke ratio and increase production.

2. Heavy metal smelting, fire smelting plays a major role, in addition to sulfur and iron oxidation heat release, but also rely on fuel combustion to provide heat. In order to strengthen the smelting process, reduce energy consumption, reduce harmful smoke volume, the use of oxygen rich instead of air for smelting, while improving the production capacity of the equipment.

3. In the production of synthetic ammonia, oxygen is mainly used for the oxidation of raw gas. For example, high temperature cracking of heavy oil and gasification of pulverized coal are used to strengthen the process and increase fertilizer production.

4. Liquid oxygen is the best accelerant of modern rockets, in the supersonic aircraft also need liquid oxygen as an oxidizer, flammable substances impregnated with liquid oxygen has a strong explosive, can be made of liquid oxygen explosives, used for excavation, excavation mining and other open-air engineering blasting.

5. In the natural gas reforming production of methanol, ethylene, propylene oxidation production of oxides, desulfurization and recovery, also need to consume a lot of oxygen.

6. In the pressurized gasification of coal, in order to maintain the temperature of the oxidation layer in the furnace, sufficient oxygen must be supplied. The oxygen purity is not less than 95%, and the oxygen consumption per kilogram of coal varies with the coal type and coal quality. The oxygen pressure is determined by the production process requirements, and the higher the pressure, the less oxygen consumption.

7. Supply breathing: used for hypoxia, low oxygen or no oxygen environment, such as: diving operations, mountaineering, high-altitude flight, space navigation, patient first aid and auxiliary treatment indispensable substances.

8. Oxygen can also support combustion, often used in metal cutting and welding. Oxygen acts as an accelerant for acetylene to produce a high temperature flame that melts the metal.

9. The mining, production and creation of stone and glass products require a large amount of oxygen.

10. Gases necessary for plants to breathe.

11. Commonly used as a catalyst, can react with other chemical substances, widely used in chemical experiments.

12. Now people's material and spiritual life is extremely rich, oxygen bar gradually developed, so that people living in the busy city can sit down, oxygen rest, relax and adjust.

Oxygen is the source of life, now oxygen is widely used in various fields, oxygen production has been an indispensable part of the national economy. Xiaobian just lists some of the more extensive uses, of course, there are still a lot of unknown for us to discover.