What is Ozone?
Chemically, ozone is oxygen with an extra molecule added. Electically, ozone is oxygen with a higher energy level. It is unstable and highly reactive.
There is a cycle of oxygen just as there is a cycle of water. Oxygen is released in photosynthesis by land plants and ocean phytoplankton (mostly diatoms), and rises up in the atmosphere about 25-30 miles, where it is energized by a part of the ultraviolet spectrum of energy from the sun, producing ozone. Ozone is heavier than air and begins to descend. It immediately atteches itself to airborne particles if it contacts them, oxidizing them, cleaning the air. If it encounters water vapour, it can attach itself to it, forming hydrogen peroxide. Rain and snow both contain hydrogen peroxide naturally. That is why plants grow better from rain water than from irrigation.
At ground level, ozone attaches itself to all pollutants, oxidizing them and cleaning the air. It has been incorrectly blamed for smog. Ozone is present in smog only transiently at around 25 parts per hundred million.
Carbon monoxide is present in smog at about 3000 parts per hundred million, and hydrocarbons at about 100 parts per hundred million. Smog is produced by the photoelectric effect of the sun's rays acting on carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide in the atmosphere, which are the end products when hydrocarbons are burned.
Ozone cannot be produced in the internal combustion engine because the hydrocarbon fuel quenches the spark gap. The ozone that exists in the atmosphere is produced by nature and it is attracted to pollutants because of opposite charge -- it attempts to oxidize them and clean the air. The problem is one of too little ozone to complete the job, not too much.
Ozone is also created near the ground by lightning. The fresh smell in the air after a thunderstorm is ozone. The amount of ozone created in an average thunderstorm is about three times the safe limit according to US EPA regulations.
Ozone (O3) is an allotropic form of oxygen: it is oxygen in its most active state; it therefore means a more generous supply of oxygen, the life giver.
Through the action of the flashes of lightning, and the photochemical reaction of the UV light of the sun on atmspheric oxygen, nature produces ozone for the purpose of purifying the air,purifying the food and to destroy all organic decay upon which disease germs and bacteria thrive.
