Trimix is a general name for a type of gas blend used by technical divers and contains nitrogen, oxygen and helium. In one Trimix blend, the partial pressures of each gas are 55.0 atm oxygen, 90.0 atm nitrogen, and 54.0 atm helium. What is the percent oxygen (by volume) in this trimex blend?
Ideal and Real Gases
Ideal gases obey conditions of the general gas laws under all states of pressure and temperature. Ideal gases are also named perfect gases. The attributes of ideal gases are as follows,
Gas Laws
Gas laws describe the ways in which volume, temperature, pressure, and other conditions correlate when matter is in a gaseous state. The very first observations about the physical properties of gases was made by Robert Boyle in 1662. Later discoveries were made by Charles, Gay-Lussac, Avogadro, and others. Eventually, these observations were combined to produce the ideal gas law.
Gaseous State
It is well known that matter exists in different forms in our surroundings. There are five known states of matter, such as solids, gases, liquids, plasma and Bose-Einstein condensate. The last two are known newly in the recent days. Thus, the detailed forms of matter studied are solids, gases and liquids. The best example of a substance that is present in different states is water. It is solid ice, gaseous vapor or steam and liquid water depending on the temperature and pressure conditions. This is due to the difference in the intermolecular forces and distances. The occurrence of three different phases is due to the difference in the two major forces, the force which tends to tightly hold molecules i.e., forces of attraction and the disruptive forces obtained from the thermal energy of molecules.
![**Question 12 of 13**
**Trimix Composition and Calculating Oxygen Percentage**
Trimix is a general name for a type of gas blend used by technical divers. It contains nitrogen, oxygen, and helium. In one Trimix blend, the partial pressures of each gas are given as 55.0 atm for oxygen, 90.0 atm for nitrogen, and 54.0 atm for helium. The question is: What is the percent oxygen (by volume) in this Trimix blend?
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**Components of Trimix:**
1. **Oxygen:** 55.0 atm
2. **Nitrogen:** 90.0 atm
3. **Helium:** 54.0 atm
**Calculating Percent Oxygen:**
To find the percent oxygen by volume, you add up the partial pressures of all gases to find the total pressure, then divide the oxygen partial pressure by the total pressure, and multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
\[ \text{Total Pressure} = 55.0 + 90.0 + 54.0 = 199.0 \, \text{atm} \]
\[ \text{Percent Oxygen} = \left(\frac{55.0}{199.0}\right) \times 100 \approx 27.64\% \]
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The interface below the question features a numeric keypad for entering responses, with numbers 0 through 9, a decimal point, and a clear button to remove entries. There is a space for entering the percentage answer, marked by a percentage symbol (%).](/v2/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcontent.bartleby.com%2Fqna-images%2Fquestion%2F7bd06d49-1f03-4d83-9ba1-5526279a5db3%2F99867dfb-a9d4-4df6-b911-93ea70a009bf%2Ftipxw2_processed.png&w=3840&q=75)
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