EXXON ENERGY

The ozone layer, located in the stratosphere, between 16 and 30 km altitude. With about 20 km thick, contains approximately 90% of atmospheric ozone.

The gases in the ozone layer is so thin that, if compressed to atmospheric pressure at sea level, its thickness would be greater than a few millimeters. This gas is produced at low latitudes, moving directly to the high latitudes.

The electromagnetic radiation emitted by the sun brings energy to the Earth, including infrared radiation, visible light and a combination of radiation and particles, many of these harmful.

Much of the solar energy is absorbed and re-emitted by the atmosphere. If it came in its entirety to the surface, this energy to sterilize. The ozone layer is a major barrier that protects living things from ultraviolet rays. Ozone lets through only a small portion of UV rays, this beneficial. When molecular oxygen of high-atmosphere interactions suffers due to the ultraviolet energy from the sun, eventually dividing into atomic oxygen, the oxygen atom and the molecule of the same element are joined due to re-ionization, and end up forming the ozone molecule whose composition is O3.

The region, when saturated with ozone, acts as a filter where the molecules absorb ultraviolet radiation from the sun and due to photochemical reactions, mitigating its effect. It is this region that are the of the nacreous clouds, which are formed by the ozone layer.

The ozone layer is formed and is destroyed by natural phenomena, maintaining a dynamic balance, not always having the same thickness. The thickness can thus change naturally throughout the seasons and even from year to year. But not always layer destruction occurs due to natural causes. On the formation, stratospheric ozone is formed usually when some kind of radiation or electrical discharge separates the two atoms of oxygen molecule (O2), which then may recombine with other individual oxygen molecules to form ozone (O3). Interestingly, UV radiation also contributes to ozone formation.

The air around us contains approximately 20% oxygen. The oxygen molecule can be represented as O2, i.e., two oxygen atoms chemically bonded. Simply put, it is molecular oxygen we breathe. The ozone molecule is a rare combination of molecular oxygen atoms, is represented as O3. For this molecule is required to be created a certain amount of energy, like that of lightning, for example, that transforms the O2 molecule into two free oxygen atoms.

The free oxygen atoms in the atmosphere are chemically active and tend to combine with nearby molecules to stabilize themselves. Imagine that we have adjacent to the free atoms of oxygen molecules of oxygen and any other. Call the second M (molecule).

Soon we will have:

O + O2 + M → O3 + M

A free atom of oxygen with an oxygen molecule and a molecule M are transformed into ozone, a molecule M.

M molecule that is not consumed by the reaction, but it is necessary so that it can accomplish. In fact M is a catalyst, in which case the Earth’s atmosphere may be the molecular nitrogen (N2).

So this is one of the most common ways to produce ozone. Others would come from industrial furnaces, engines and other self-motives that produce gas. In the lower atmosphere ozone is active and contributes to air pollution industry, is considered a poison.