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Information about Liquid Oxygen

“LOX” redirects here. For other uses, see Lox (disambiguation).


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Liquid Oxygen In Test Tube
Liquid oxygen (also LOx, LOX or Lox in the aerospace, submarine and gas industry) is the liquid form of oxygen. It has a pale blue color and is strongly paramagnetic. Liquid oxygen has a density of 1.141 g/cm³ (1.141 kg/L) and is moderately cryogenic (freezing point: 50.5 K (-222.65 °C), boiling point: 90.188 K (-182.96 °C) at 101.325 kPa (760 mm Hg). In commerce, liquid oxygen is classified as an industrial gas and is widely used for industrial and medical purposes. Liquid oxygen is obtained from the oxygen found naturally in air by fractional distillation. Liquid oxygen has an expansion ratio of 860:1, and because of this, is used in commercial and military aircraft today.

Due to its cryogenic nature, LOX can cause the materials it touches to become extremely brittle. Liquid oxygen is also a very powerful oxidising agent: organic materials will burn rapidly and energetically in liquid oxygen. Further; if soaked in LOX some can detonate unpredictably on subsequent contact. Petrochemicals often exhibit this behavior, including asphalt.

LOX is a common liquid oxidizer propellant for spacecraft rocket applications, usually in combination with liquid hydrogen or kerosene. It was used in the very first rocket applications like the V2 missile and Redstone, R-7 Semyorka or Atlas boosters. LOX is useful in this role because it creates a high specific impulse. LOX was also used in some early ICBMs, although more modern ICBMs do not use LOX because its cryogenic properties and need for regular replenishment to replace boiloff make it harder to maintain and launch quickly. Despite this, many modern rockets do use LOX, including the main engines on the Space Shuttle. During World War II, liquid oxygen was used as an oxidizer in several Nazi Germany military rocket designs, under name A-Stoff and Sauerstoff.

LOX also had extensive use in making oxyliquit explosives, but is rarely used now due to a high rate of accidents.

Liquid nitrogen has a significantly lower boiling point, at -196 °C (77 K) than oxygen's -183 °C (90 K), and vessels containing liquid nitrogen can condense oxygen from air: when most of the nitrogen has evaporated from such a vessel there is a risk that liquid oxygen remaining can react violently with organic material. Conversely, liquid nitrogen or liquid air can be oxygen-enriched by letting it stand in open air; atmospheric oxygen dissolves in it, while nitrogen evaporates preferentially.

Also See

Lox can stand for any of several things:
  • Lox - brined salmon, especially important in Ashkenazic Jewish cuisine
  • LOx (oxidizer) - chemical term for liquid oxygen, which is often used as an oxidizer in aerospace
  • LOX (enzyme) - enzyme found in cancer cells

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Please help [ improve this article] by expanding this section.
See talk page for details. Please remove this message once the section has been expanded. (tagged since March 2007)

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submarine is a watercraft that can operate underwater. Military submarines were first widely used in World War I and are used by all major navies today. Civilian submarines and submersibles are used for scientific work at depths too great for human divers.
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Gas is one of the four major states of matter, consisting of freely moving atoms or molecules without a definite shape. Compared to the solid and liquid states of matter a gas has lower density and a lower viscosity.
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2, −1
(neutral oxide)
Electronegativity 3.44 (Pauling scale)
Ionization energies
(more) 1st: 1313.9 kJmol−1
2nd: 3388.3 kJmol−1
3rd: 5300.5 kJmol−1

Atomic radius 60 pm
Atomic radius (calc.
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Paramagnetism is a form of magnetism which occurs only in the presence of an externally applied magnetic field. Paramagnetic materials are attracted to magnetic fields, hence have a relative magnetic permeability greater than one (or, equivalently, a positive magnetic
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cryogenics is the study of the production of very low temperatures (below –150 °C, –238 °F or 123 K) and the behavior of materials at those temperatures. (Rather than the familiar temperature scales of Fahrenheit and Celsius, cryogenicists use the Kelvin and Rankine
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Industrial gas is a group of gases that are commercially manufactured and sold for uses in other applications. These gases are mainly used in an industrial processes, such as steelmaking, medical applications, fertilizer, semiconductors, etc,.
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2, −1
(neutral oxide)
Electronegativity 3.44 (Pauling scale)
Ionization energies
(more) 1st: 1313.9 kJmol−1
2nd: 3388.3 kJmol−1
3rd: 5300.5 kJmol−1

Atomic radius 60 pm
Atomic radius (calc.
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Air or Earth's atmosphere is a layer of gases surrounding the planet Earth.

Air may also refer to:
  • Air (1977 video game), an air combat based mainframe computer game
  • Air (band), a French electronic music duo

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Fractional distillation is the separation of a mixture into its component parts, or fractions, such as in separating chemical compounds by their boiling point by heating them to a temperature at which several fractions of the compound will evaporate.
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Expansion ratio is used in the context of liquefied and cryogenic substances. The expansion ratio of a substance is the volume of a given amount of that substance in liquid form compared to the volume of the same amount of substance in gaseous form.
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Petrochemicals are chemical products made from raw materials of petroleum (hydrocarbon) origin. (Etymologically, the name is incorrect, as the Greek root petro- means "rock"; the correct term is oleochemicals, from the Greek root oleo-, meaning "oil".
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The term asphalt is often used as an abbreviation for asphalt concrete. For the film, see Asphalt (film); for the novel, see Carl Hancock Rux.


Asphalt
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oxidizing agent (also called an oxidant or oxidizer) is
  1. A chemical compound that readily transfers oxygen atoms or
  2. A substance that gains electrons in a redox chemical reaction.
The former definition is not applicable to what most people read about.
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Spacecraft propulsion is any method used to change the velocity of spacecraft and artificial satellites. There are many different methods. Each method has drawbacks and advantages, and spacecraft propulsion is an active area of research.
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Liquid hydrogen is the liquid state of the element hydrogen. It is a common liquid rocket fuel for rocket applications. In the aerospace industry, its name is often abbreviated to LH2 or LH2.
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Kerosene, sometimes spelled kerosine in scientific and industrial usage,[1] is a flammable hydrocarbon liquid. The name is derived from Greek "keros" (κηρός wax).
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Function single stage ballistic missile (area bombing)
Manufacturer Mittelwerk GmbH (development by Army Research Center Peenemünde)
Unit cost 100,000 RM January 1944, 50,000 RM March 1945[1]
Entered service 1944
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First launched in 1953, the American Redstone rocket was a direct descendant of the German V-2. It was used for the first live nuclear missile tests by the United States. It was also known as the Redstone MRBM (medium range ballistic missile).
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R-7 Semyorka (Russian: Р-7 "Семёрка") was the world's first intercontinental ballistic missile and was deployed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War from 1959 to 1968.
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Atlas is a family of U.S. space launch vehicles. The original Atlas missile was designed in the late 1950s. It was a liquid-fuel rocket burning LOX and RP-1 in three engines configured in an unusual "stage-and-a-half" or "Parallel Staging" design: two of its three engines were
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Specific impulse (usually abbreviated Isp) is a way to describe the efficiency of rocket and jet engines. It represents the impulse (change in momentum) per unit of propellant.
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intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM, is a long-range (greater than 5,500 km or 3,500 miles) ballistic missile typically designed for nuclear weapons delivery, that is, delivering one or more nuclear warheads.
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Space Shuttle

Space Shuttle Atlantis on the launch pad prior to the STS-115 mission.
Fact sheet
Function Manned partially re-usable launch and reentry system
Manufacturer United Space Alliance:
Thiokol/Boeing (SRBs)
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Allied powers:
 Soviet Union
 United States
 United Kingdom
 China
 France
...et al. Axis powers:
 Germany
 Japan
 Italy
...et al.
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An oxyliquit is an explosive material made of a mixture of liquid oxygen (LOX) with a suitable fuel, usually carbon (as lampblack) or some organic chemical (eg. a mixture of soot and naphthalene), wood meal, or aluminium powder or sponge; the material is capable of absorbing
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explosive material is a material that either is chemically or otherwise energetically unstable or produces a sudden expansion of the material usually accompanied by the production of heat and large changes in pressure (and typically also a flash and/or loud noise) upon initiation;
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Liquid nitrogen (liquid density at the triple point is 0.807 g/mL) is the liquid produced industrially in large quantities by fractional distillation of liquid air and is often referred to by the abbreviation, LN2. It is pure nitrogen, in a liquid state.
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For the substance, see Liquid air


Liquid Air was the brand name of an unusual automobile produced by a joint American/English concern between 1899 and 1902.
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