Oxygen is a miracle drug for many conditions, and is absolutely essential for serious surgeries. Kids Operating Room (KidsOR) (https://www.kidsor.org/) installs pediatric surgical theaters in the poorest countries of the world. Recently, they installed their 101st operating room, and have now performed 722,401 pediatric surgeries.
Generally, these operating rooms use either bottled oxygen or pressure-swing adsorption (PSA) oxygen generators. However, KidsOR has teamed with NASA to experiment with a new technology designed by the US501c3 public charity Public Invention and produced by American Oxygen (https://www.amox.us/). Robert L. Read, founder of Public Invention, helped Dave Tipping and his KidsOR team install the NASA/AmOx/Public Invention system at the KidsOR headquarters in Dundee, Scotland.
This revolutionary technology uses ceramic ion transport to pull extremely pure oxygen directly out of the air. Unlike a PSA system, it has no moving parts (except a small fan), and it is expected to find uses ranging from a single recovery bed up to providing oxygen for a complete hospital. With no moving parts, it will be highly reliable even in the most remote and rural locations, where oxygen bottle delivery and maintenance of PSA plants is difficult and expensive. KidsOR is running a 6-month experiment to show that the system can work uninterrupted for six months with no loss of the oxygen’s purity, flow, or pressure.
Public Invention also designed a data acquisition system that constantly logs purity for three different kinds of sensors, and measures flow against 100 psi pressure. These measurements are sufficient to someday allow a KidsOR installation to bottle oxygen directly. The Public Invention digital control system will also support the AmOx technology during brownouts and blackouts, which are common in the rural settings of Low and Middle Income countries (LMICs). If NASA’s efforts succeed, this technology may someday fill spacesuits or oxidize rocket fuel tanks on Mars.
