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  4. What materials are used in the reservoir?
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  4. What materials are used in the reservoir?

What materials are used in the reservoir?

We receive this ques­tion often. The cus­tom mate­r­i­al we cur­rent­ly use for the reser­voir has a thin film lay­er of poly­eth­yl­ene plas­tic lam­i­nat­ed to a high ten­sile strength nylon material.

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The “air” only comes in con­tact with the PET thin film side of the mate­r­i­al. PET is con­sid­ered non-reac­tive even in high oxy­gen con­cen­tra­tion envi­ron­ments. For prac­ti­cal ref­er­ence, the mate­r­i­al is the thick­ness of a sin­gle lay­er of kitchen plas­tic wrap.

The reser­voir’s pur­pose is to retain oxy­gen. Our tests show that oxy­gen dif­fus­es out over about 24 – 48 hours. 

This enables users to rely on a high con­cen­tra­tion of oxy­gen dur­ing train­ing — but min­i­mizes total plas­tics to only enough to retain the oxy­gen for a rea­son­able amount of time.

Con­ver­sion Kit.

This just-right bal­ance explains why LiveO2 reser­voirs nev­er have an odor. The oxy­gen +O2 side air just smells clean. The hypox­ic ‑O2 air is warmer and nat­u­ral­ly con­cen­trates envi­ron­men­tal odors because odor-caus­ing mol­e­cules con­cen­trate in ambi­ent air fil­trate dur­ing mol­e­c­u­lar air separation.

LiveO2 reser­voirs do not tend to absorb envi­ron­men­tal con­t­a­m­i­nants because they have min­i­mum embod­ied plas­tic. A LiveO2 reser­voir con­tains about 30 grams of non-fab­ric plas­tic, which is about 2 table­spoons stretched into the thinnest pos­si­ble sheet.

The thin sheet min­i­mizes the absorp­tion capac­i­ty and pre­vents odor from lin­ger­ing. This is why LiveO2 reser­voirs smell clean even after they’ve been exposed to envi­ron­men­tal chem­i­cals, like smoke or clean­ing agents. Reser­voir chem­i­cal absorp­tion capac­i­ty is very low due to a very small amount of embod­ied plastic.

Here is the sequence of rea­sons why LiveO2 reser­voirs have no odor:

  1. Reser­voirs use a very small amount of plas­tic. The reser­voir has a total of about ~30 grams of PETPET is the clean­est plas­tic available. 
  2. The plas­tic is very thin, .5 ml to min­i­mize capac­i­ty and quick­ly release gasses. The PET has stretched to a very thin .5 ml and then heat-bond­ed to a strong porous fab­ric that rapid­ly dis­si­pates gasses to the environment. 
  3. LiveO2 mate­ri­als age 2 – 6 months so there is lots of time for residues to dis­si­pate pri­or to cus­tomer contact.
  4. The PET lay­er is two-sided. Half of the embod­ied volatiles dis­si­pate exter­nal to the reservoir. 
  5. LiveO2 reser­voirs release gasses that may accu­mu­late inside with a quick drain zip­per-port, non-sealed seams. The design enables clean­ing and main­te­nance in case of expo­sure to smoke, clean­ing agents, or oth­er chem­i­cals. Unsealed design enables gasses that may leach dur­ing stor­age to escape.
  6. Thin plas­tic con­struc­tion min­i­mizes absorp­tion capac­i­ty. Odors to smoke, clean­ing solu­tions, and oth­er chem­i­cals dis­si­pate quick­ly, with­in a day, to an unde­tectable lev­el, hence liveO2 reser­voirs always smell clean.
  7. Sup­ports Ozone Purifi­ca­tion. LiveO3 can be used to san­i­tize LiveO2 reser­voirs by fill­ing the reser­voir with ozone in case of chem­i­cal expo­sure or oth­er contaminants.

Formal Testing of New Materials

Dur­ing nor­mal use, volatile chem­i­cals are unde­tectable in LiveO2 reservoirs.

Nonethe­less, Good Man­u­fac­tur­ing Prac­tice includes deter­min­ing the max­i­mum pos­si­ble VOCs that can be released over the Life­time of the LiveO2 reservoir. 

The max Lifetime VOC Release Test

This test deter­mines how much VOC is present in the mate­ri­als when they are cre­at­ed. This test deter­mines the max­i­mum amount that may be released over the phys­i­cal prod­uct lifetime. 

Outgas Test

Mate­r­i­al out­gas tests are designed to test the total amount of out­gas mate­r­i­al present in a sam­ple of new mate­r­i­al. A sam­ple of mate­r­i­al, nor­mal­ly ~10 grams, is enclosed in a small vac­u­um-sealed con­tain­er, nor­mal­ly ~100 cc, and baked at 250 C for 1 hour. 

After bak­ing, the pres­sure of the con­tain­er is mea­sured. The increase in gas pres­sure in the con­tain­er approx­i­mate­ly rep­re­sents the total amount of VOC that the sam­ple mate­r­i­al may release over the ser­vice life of the sample.

These con­di­tions pro­voke out­gas tests in the range of the low­est detectable lim­it VOCs: <4 ug/g, <4 ppm. 

Even these lev­els are far with­in accept­able safe­ty stan­dards and exceed safe­ty stan­dards for VOCs present in new homes and new cars. 

Updated on May 4, 2022

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