Oxygen machine powers on to save lives

How does a team made up of theoretical and particle physicists and medical scientists from the University of Melbourne solve a problem which kills 1.5 million kids a year?

The problem is that blackouts in low and middle-income nations stop oxygen generators in their tracks, potentially leading to the death of children with pneumonia, the number one killer of children under five worldwide. Worse, many small health facilities have no access to electricity at all.

Pneumonia kills one child every 30 seconds. Even if a child suffering from severe pneumonia is on antibiotics, without a steady flow of purified oxygen their lungs struggle to cope and the condition often becomes fatal.

But a cross-faculty partnership at the University of Melbourne might just have come up with some creative and (importantly) low-cost ways to remove the nitrogen that makes up 78 per cent of the air, leaving purified oxygen to go to the patient.

New approach to solve old problem

Where there is electricity, they build on existing oxygen concentrator technology by storing some of the oxygen locally at low pressure, ready to come instantly online and ensure a steady supply whenever the electricity fails.

The solution for places with no electricity comes straight out of left field: a new approach to concentrators that uses a vacuum created...