Do Air Conditioners Provide Oxygen & Prevent Suffocation?

I’m sitting in my air-conditioned room for long hours and it makes me wonder, does air conditioner provide oxygen? So, I did some research.

Air conditioners do not provide oxygen. The air conditioner itself does not produce oxygen. However, an air conditioner can attach a duct to introduce fresh air or outside air and supply oxygen into a room or building. Residential air conditioners often don’t require fresh air while commercial buildings usually have fresh air in their air conditioning system.

Some people misunderstand that air conditioner produce oxygen but it doesn’t and it has some good reason not to do so.

How Does Air Conditioner Supply Air?

An air conditioner is not designed to produce oxygen by itself. However, some of the air conditioners can be connected to a duct to introduce fresh air or outside air into a room or building depending on the types of air conditioners.

Most of the residential application does not required fresh air or outside air because the door gaps are allowing sufficient oxygen to flow in.

Some air conditioners such as the wall mounted type, are not designed to bring in fresh air or outside air. They only recirculates the air within a room or space.

On the other hand, types such as the ceiling cassette are capable of connecting to a duct to introduce fresh air or outside air into the air conditioner and distribute alongside the recirculated air.

Most commercial buildings do not have windows in all of the rooms. Also, there are often many people stay in the same room for a long period of time for tasks such as meeting and presentation. Therefore, commercial buildings usually have a comprehensive fresh air system to ensure all spaces have a sufficient amount of oxygen.

fresh air intake grilles on building external wall

Some high-tech buildings even have sensor to detect the number of people inside a space and automatically adjust the fresh air amount that is needed. Generally, the fresh air amount is about 15% of the supply air amount.

Will You Suffocate in Air Conditioned Room?

You hardly can suffocate in your air conditioned room. Your room has door and window gaps that oxygen can sip in to help you breathe.

Humans averagely breathe in 550 liters of oxygen per day. If your room is 12 ft by 12 ft with 9 ft ceiling height, you have more than 36k liters of air available and 20% of it is oxygen, which gives you more than 7,200 liters of oxygen where you can stay for 13 days straight before the oxygen runs out assuming in a fully enclosed room.

If you ever feel suffocated in an air-conditioned room, you’ve probably stayed too long inside. Try to get up and walk around your house or open the windows and take a deep breath.

How Can You Maintain Oxygen Level in Air Conditioned Room

The long-term solution to maintaining a good oxygen level throughout the day in the air-conditioned room is to introduce a fresh air system. Connect your air conditioner with a duct or a separate fresh air system with booster fans to bring in outside air into your room.

If it is your own bedroom, open your window a little, just enough to give the outside air flowing in and out of your bedroom. However, introducing outside air into air conditioned room will consume more energy. Thus, some people choose not to bring in outside air to conserve energy.

Common places with air conditioners that supply fresh air:

Office buildings
Hotels (room, corridor, lounge, lobby, kitchen)
Shopping malls (mall, retail lot)
Airports, airplanes
Buses, trains
Factories, production plants
Hospitals (ICU, general ward, OT, corridor)
Cinemas

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