Our DIY oxygen concentrator briefly explained. 

I think it's alive.

I hate it , it bring back very bitter memories

Will you explain/elaborate this thing? Please I want to know more

The sensor does have a heater, it only operates for 1 second, could that be a safety issue with almost pure oxygen? Doubtful but worth noting.

@@zbdot73 if you don't activate it I don't think it will be a problem, it needs a special command for it. Even so I doubt it will pose a problem and even if you need to run it you can do it when the machine is not running

@@zbdot73 the sensor needs to be placed on the input side, to measure the humidity of the air flowing into the system, not on the oxygen output... so no risks here

Hi, I'm Parthiban from India. Pretty impressed with your videos especially with your oxygen concentrator. Here due to the pandemic the oxygen supply is too low and requires some out of box solutions other than the liquid oxygen cylinders. It would be a great help if you can share your oxygen concentrator system schematics and other details so that we can try reproducing it locally. It might save lot of lives.

@@edutate4808 Check out the link in my comment... Edit: or go and take a look at oxikit dot com

@@edutate4808 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-tobUvesSOzw.html

@ZolidL Water from the radiator is removed by the water separator (that grey thing with blue elements), the problem is only when you see water drops condensed in the hoses leading to the sieve beds or water leaking from the valves..

Something is strange here. The cycle of this machine is different than the commercial machines. I use two commercial machines that are over 20 years old and have 20,000 hours on them and still produce over 90% concentration. There is no water handling at all in the machines and humidity has no effect on the output. (humidity is HORRIBLE here in Houston TX where I live!) Possibly the type of sieve is the reason. Mine use 13X lithium sieve. That is different than what is used here.

How is this one different that yours. ?

@@xpiyrw2374 Mine works on pressure selective separation. The sieve canister is compressed with fresh air. The nitrogen binds more to the sieve than the oxygen. The pressure is released through two valves. The first is the oxygen valve, which lets the pressure drop while the oxygen is expelled. Then the valves switch and the pressure is allowed to bleed all the way down as the nitrogen is expelled. The oxygen goes to the outlet, the nitrogen back to the atmosphere.

Nitrogen is a reactive gas at high temperatures which is why it is not used in welding.

@@glasslinger nitrogen is used as a cheap "shielding gas" in MIG welding.

That's right, only a finite amount of read/write cycles...cheers.

It is usually 100 000 cycles for modern EEPROM, I would consider it a serious bug if an oxycon needs to do this amount of writes :-)

@@daliborfarny if you store "Breathe in, Breathe Out"... you would get 5 days )

This one is new, I don't think it contains lead (considering RoHS and other regulations - even though lead is allowed in automotive)..

It was true for the old copper radiators that were soldered with lead (many decades ago) but he is using a modern all aluminium core rad with plastic end caps. No lead in there.

Lead is a SOLID not a gas! DUH!

I was going to ask the same thing 😂

JALON Lithium Molecular sieves JLOX 101

I added this info to the description.

@@trkadam58 Thank you

@@daliborfarny Thank you soo much!

No, it is all done locally from/to around the machine.

@@daliborfarny It doesn’t make it harder to breath for the people in the room?

@@dansv1 We have this machine in a separate room, the workshop where the oxygen is combusted with propane (burners) is ventilated (fumes extractors).

You need to make some minor changes (like the valves and storage outlet, etc) as he talked about here in order to make the work seamless in a chain, he also added the externa cooler and the improved water separation, etc. If You plan to use a smaller unit, like for glassblowing experiments or something like that You can of course chain up two or tree modifyed machines after those internal modifications.

Hi, thank you! The original machines were not working properly - leaking valves, bad sieves etc.. they were stopping all the time, leaving us without oxygen in the middle of work :-). Also, they were occupying lot of space.

Seems like more convenience to have them all in the same place with a single output, and he mentioned that they had to be modified anyways to remove unnecessary safety features.

This unit uses jellybean parts that can be had all over the world in the space of a week; the Invacare parts are almost impossible to find cheaply on a normal day - right now it would be truly impossible with the pandemic. The pilot-operated spool valves (plastic) in the original are prone to failing and intermittent sticking.

It's all about the compresors.

1mm diameter 13x.

Best to use 5A

Pressure in the zeolite tank is released to atmosphere, nitrogen leaves due to the lower pressure. Equalization valve helps to purge any excess out when regenerating.

The 13X sieve is not sensitive to humidity like the lithium sieve used here. You do not have to pump the oxygen out, it will flow by itself by virtue of the pressure used to charge the sieve bed. Note that there is an upper pressure limit to the process. Going above this pressure is useless, producing no more oxygen but using up power. This could overheat your sieves.

how do you make the cylinders for sieve bed assembly?

@@triprjt7857 Buy them! They are cheap! www.healthproductsforyou.com/p-inogen-at-home-replacement-column-pair.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIz7HMzJ_O8AIV8hplCh2xXQ-JEAQYBCABEgJtIfD_BwE

@@triprjt7857we try to develop trial is ongoing

@@glasslinger thanks for this information

I think cycling cylinders in parallel would work and eliminate compressors and valves. Of course the compressor you use must supply enough volume. The commercial high volume systems tend to use one compressor and larger beds.

Added to the description.

In this video, it achieved around 90% and the flow is more than 10liter. The molecular sieve can reach 93%±3 .

It can't do like that

with another compressor added to the output, you can make any pressure you want. that's how 2,500 psi oxygen tanks are filled!.

Yes, those are very simplifyed, they are originaly designed as medical respiratory equpiment (like for persons who suffer from silicos infection or lung cancer), not for producing industrial grade purifyed oxygen.

Yes, I used a similar capillary tube permeable membrane unit to generate high quality nitrogen to be used as an inert fill gas for a packaging line, which worked out cheaper than using tanked or cylinder nitrogen, and which had a break even point after 6 months. Just needed a 6 bar supply of very clean air, so had a cascaded series of filters for it. First 2 were regular air filters from the pneumatics supplier, to remove oil and water, and then a 0.3 micron filter after that to get more out. Then 2 cascaded ultra filtration units which got the feed air down to the desired cleanliness. I used to change those filters every 3 months, throw the first one away, and move the second one to the first bowl, and put the new one in the final position. The first filter would be dirty, but in general the second would stay very clean. Took the oxygen down from 21% to around 2%, though you could get to 99% but only at lower flow rates, so the 98% with a higher flow rate was better, as it was able to purge the packing area more effectively, and the product entering there would get most of the oxygen removed from around it during the pack cycle, and finish off at around 4% oxygen, which made shelf life a lot better. Yes i did use an oxygen sensor, but after the testing it was not used again, as it only has a operational life of 6 months once opened to air, as it is an electrochemical cell, and replacement ones were extremely expensive, as it was EEX rated.

@@SeanBZA That was genuinly interesing, i was actualy trhinking about exactly this on another place.

@@SeanBZA thank you for your kindness please will you be so kind to facilitate information about this project

Funny how that works, huh? It's the same thing, described in different ways.

just heat them up in an oven every year or so , depending on usage levels - good to go

@@peterciurea7771 Can you explain that more in detail? Does it reallywork?

@@nelsonreis8285 yes. It's what they recommend in turbo molecular pumps. They tend to not mention it in concentrators because they want you to come get the cylinders refilled. Just make sure you have a way to remove and replace the sieves and still have the cylinder airtight- you don't heat them in the aluminum tanks, it will weaken the aluminum. Pop them in a steel vessel, heat to something like 400F for a couple of hours, drive out all moisture and adsorbed gas. you might need to reactivate them with acid if they are really bad- there are tutorials on how to do that on youtube

And the oxy molecular sieve in this video is also supplied by us.

He shows this in the video. Output from the six compressors gets sent through a car radiator on the side of his machine. The pipes through the radiator are oriented vertically. When the air is cooled, water drips down (and out a port on the bottom), dry air moves up. He also runs it through an additional water separator before the air hits the zeolite tubes.

@@McTroyd thanks a lot sir

@@swarnenduray9582 No worries.

The zeolite absorbs the nitrogen in the air which is drawn in from atmospheric air, and the output from the sieve beds I'd just pure oxygen. Silica gel is used to remove moisture. It is different so I wouldn't think you can use silica gel.

The amount of silica gel required would be huge! It absorbs water slowly so to handle the flow of the machine you would need cubic feet of it! Then you would have to have means to dry out the silica gel regularly. The radiator method is much more suitable.

The oxygen here is never above 2 Bar, what you wrote applies to oxygen under high pressure.

@@daliborfarny Thanks for explaining. I would still advise people to be careful to keep things clean. In my youth I succeeded in making grease ignite spontaneously by sticking the tip of an unlit oxy-acetylene torch into it and turning on the oxygen valve. I'll admit I had to really work at it to make it happen though.

I think he said is was salvaged from the O2 concentrators that were the source of the sieve beds. It is just a simple valve used to quickly pressurise the fresh bed before pushing compressed air in. He said they removed the flow restrictors from the O2 output lines so the valve may not even be needed but using the restrictions and the valve improves the efficiency/concentration somewhat.

He repeats more than once that this is for oxy-fuel torches for working hot glass and not to defeat the safety systems in the medical units if using it for breathing oxygen.

The sad part is most people think they can't do things like this. Yes you can build this in your basement you just need to put the work in.

@@jeffproulx3388 LOL! Ya sure! LOL!

This machine has its own small room with 1m thick walls - that's the noise suppression :-)

@@daliborfarny Yea, I'm busy making the molds to make the 1m thick walls for my concentrator room! (grin!) Not everybody has a CASTLE for a shop! Great idea on the concentrator but I think you are using the wrong sieve material. I have no problem with moisture at all with my machines and the humidity here is AWFUL in summer. The 13X sieve is drastically cheaper than the lithium stuff and seems to not be bothered by moisture.

@@glasslinger what is the highest humidity range you have? Here, in pacific coast it tops 98% relative