The second and final day of the European Industrial Gases Association (EIGA)’s Winter Summit 2023 featured discussion around oxygen safety, gases for chip manufacturing, home healthcare, CO2 as a feedstock and developing a hydrogen ecosystem.
Giving a brief outline of the history of oxygen, Nikos Larass, Project Director of Process Safety at Linde explained that the gas was first used in 1885 to treat pneumonia by Holtzapple before the process for separating air was developed by Carl von Linde in 1895.
In 1967, tragedy struck the Apollo programme when a flash fire occurred in command module 012 during a launch pad test of the Apollo/Saturn space vehicle being prepared for the first piloted flight, the AS-204 mission.
The cause of the fire was found to be an electrical fire within an environment containing 100% pure oxygen. This provided an environment in which materials not normally flammable will be highly flammable and burst into flames.
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