How ozone therapy works
How is ozone made inside an ozone sauna?
Room air is drawn into an oxygen concentrator, which separates oxygen from nitrogen and other gases. That concentrated oxygen — 93% purity, plus or minus 3%, on the units we supply — is fed to the ozone generator built into the sauna cabinet, where a high-voltage process converts oxygen (O2) into ozone (O3).
The three stages
- Room air in. An external medical oxygen concentrator — a machine that separates oxygen out of air continuously rather than storing any — takes in ordinary ambient air.
- Oxygen separated. Inside the concentrator, oxygen is split away from nitrogen and the other constituents of air. Every concentrator we supply is a 5 litre per minute medical unit delivering 93% oxygen, plus or minus 3%, unless your order specifies otherwise.
- Ozone generated. The concentrated oxygen is piped to the ozone generator built into the sauna itself, where a high-voltage electrical process converts a portion of the O2 into O3. The standard method is corona discharge: a high voltage across a gap containing an insulating barrier creates a cold plasma that splits O2 molecules, whose fragments then form O3. The ozone and oxygen mixture is released into the cabinet on a constant 2 litre per minute flow, with you inside it.
Order of operation
Because the generator depends on the oxygen feed, the sequence matters. Switch on the wall outlet, then the concentrator, confirm it is running, and only then switch on the sauna. Shutting down runs in reverse: sauna off, then concentrator, then unplug. Running the sauna without the concentrator on will damage the ozone generator and, over a prolonged period, burn it out.
Checking that ozone is actually being produced
Use the glove test. With the concentrator running and the ozone on, hold a latex glove in front of the ozone outlet for a few seconds; ozone oxidises the latex and a hole appears. Do not test by smell: ozone is toxic to the lungs and people working around it become desensitised to the odour. If nothing happens to the glove, the usual causes are a pinched, blocked or disconnected pipe, the concentrator being off or set to the wrong level, or the ozone pipe fitting screwed on too tightly.
An airflow alarm sounds when insufficient oxygen is passing over the ozone generator; the fix is to increase the oxygen flow on the concentrator.