How much oxygen is present in blood?
Blood
About 98.5% [14] of the oxygen in a sample of arterial blood in a healthy human breathing air at sea-level pressure is chemically combined with the hemoglobin. About 1.5% is physically dissolved in the other blood liquids and not connected to hemoglobin. The hemoglobin molecule is the primary transporter of oxygen in mammals and many other species (for exceptions, see below). Hemoglobin has an oxygen binding capacity between 1.36 and 1.40 ml O2 per gram hemoglobin,[15] which increases the total blood oxygen capacity seventyfold,[16] compared to if oxygen solely were carried by its solubility of 0.03ml O2 per liter blood per mmHg partial pressure of oxygen (about 100mmHg in arteries).[16]
Triplet oxygen
Triplet oxygen, ""O, refers to the "S" = 1 electronic ground state of molecular oxygen (dioxygen). It is the most stable and common allotrope of oxygen. Molecules of triplet oxygen contain two unpaired electrons, making triplet oxygen an unusual example of a stable and commonly encountered diradical. According to molecular orbital theory, the electron configuration of triplet oxygen has two electrons occupying two π molecular orbitals (MOs) of equal energy (that is, degenerate MOs). In accordance with Hund's rules, they remain unpaired and spin-parallel and account for the paramagnetism of molecular oxygen. These half-filled orbitals are antibonding in character, reducing the overall bond order of the molecule to 2 from a maximum value of 3 (e.g., dinitrogen), which occurs when these antibonding orbitals remain fully unoccupied. The molecular term symbol for triplet oxygen is Σ.