You are sitting in a quiet room working on your chemistry take home exam. All of

Question

You are sitting in a quiet room working on your chemistry take home exam. All of a sudden you feel panic come over you and thus you decide to get up and take a break to get some fresh air. When you try to leave, you learn that only door out of the room is locked. Assuming there is no air flow into the room (it is air tight with no ventilation system) How long can you survive in this room (5 meters long, 5 meters wide, 5 meters high) with your chemistry exam? Keep in mind the following facts (you may not need to Use all of them depending on how you approach this problem), and feel free to research any information that you think is necessary to answer this question, but remember to cite any outside information. Human tidal volume (the volume of air that moves in and out of the lungs during normal quiet respiration) is about 500 ml for an adult. Resting respiratory rate for adults is 12-18 breaths per minute (bpm). Under stressful conditions, we would expect to be at the high end of that, so let's Use 18 bpm for our problem. For a human adult breathing normal air, inhaled air is about 20.8 % O_2. The density of normal air is about 1.2g/L.

Explanation / Answer

Step 1 Calculate the total volume of air in room-

Given-(5 meters long, 5 meters wide, 5 meters high)

5 meters x 5 meters x 5 meters = 125 cubic meters

A cubic meter is 1000 liters

So 125 cubic meters = 125,000 liters of fresh air.

Step 2 Calculate the volume of air used in per minute

Human tidal volume x breaths per minute

0.500L x 18 = 9 L/minute

Volume of air used in per hour = 9 L x 60 = 540 L

Volume of air used in per day = 540 L x 24 = 12960 L

Each O2 molecule our body metabolizes becomes one CO2 molecule. At the beginning, atmospheric air contains 350ppm (.035%) CO2 and 20.8% = 208,000ppm O2. A level of 40,000ppm (4%) of CO2 is considered to be immediately dangerous to human health.

Difference between 20.8 percent of 125,000 liters and 16.8 percent of 125,000 liters

(125,000 x 20.8/100)- (125,000 x 16.8/100) = 5000L O2

That gives us 5000 liters of oxygen to get through.

0 .9 kg x (1000 g/1 kg) x (1 mole O2/32 g O2) x (22.4 L/1 mole O2)

This gives us a daily oxygen intake of 630 liters per person.

Number of days a man can survive in the room (5 meters long, 5 meters wide, 5 meters high) 5000L O2/630 L O2 = 7.93days

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