

Anesthesia Miracle: No Power, No Oxygen Tanks, No Problem - danso
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/11/23/363113747/anesthesia-miracle-no-power-no-oxygen-tanks-no-problem

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gus_massa
The device looks interesting, and it's probably a good solution for place
where the electricity grid is unreliable. But I don't like this sentence:

> _The device sucks regular air from a room using a compressor and turns it
> into purified oxygen for a patient 's lungs._

It's difficult to separate the oxygen from the nitrogen without a complex
device. Do anyone have a link with more information? Is this a mistake in the
press article?

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tzs
It's note pure oxygen. It's 95%. They are using a fairly normal oxygen
concentrator that uses zeolite to remove nitrogen.

Details on the machine are at the company's site, including a nice animation
showing how the whole thing works: [http://www.gradianhealth.org/universal-
anaesthesia-machine/](http://www.gradianhealth.org/universal-anaesthesia-
machine/)

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adekok
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth)

That makes it 95.6% oxygen. Probably good enough for most purposes. And the
bulk (96%) of the non-oxygen is argon, which is inert.

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salem
This sounds like a great example of well meaning donors not really
understanding the people they are trying to help.

It would also be exciting to see some of these re-configurations reducing
costs in developed countries.

