Expeditionary Portable Oxygen Generation System

The Marine Corps uses Portable Oxygen Generators (POGS) to produce on-demand medical-grade oxygen from air for expeditionary medical applications (patient ventilation, anesthesia, and to refill oxygen bottles). The POGS currently in use are bulky, heavy and can consume up to 1,800 W of electrical power, occasionally overloading the Forward Resuscitative Surgical Systems (FRSS) power generators.In this SBIR project, TDA Research, Inc. is developing a small, low power, portable oxygen generator that uses vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) to produce USP grade, 93% medical oxygen.The unit uses ambient air as the feed and delivers USP grade oxygen. This unit will meet DoD requirements for high flow capacity (up to 15 LPM) and be able to produce oxygen at up to 2,200 psig to refill D-size oxygen bottles.The POG developed by TDA utilizes a unique sorbent that has a higher efficiency for the separation of N2 and O2 and can operate at lower pressures than currently used commercial air separation sorbents.These two characteristics enable the POG to use less electrical power and use smaller sorbent bed sizes.This will reduce the logistical burden of operating the oxygen concentrator by the Marine Corps.