Chemistry of GeNO’s Nitric Oxide Delivery Platforms At ambient temperature nitric oxide (NO) is oxidized to nitrogen dioxide (NO2) which is highly toxic. The rate of this reaction is second order for nitric oxide and first order for O2, meaning that the rate increases by the square of the nitric oxide concentration and proportionally to the oxygen concentration. For this reason, the act of diluting (mixing) high concentrations of nitric oxide into oxygen results in significant formation of NO2 in the fraction of a second that it takes for the two gases to properly mix. 
GeNO’s chemistry avoids the nitric oxide dilution step entirely. Instead, it starts with dilute NO2, chemically removes one of the oxygen atoms, and generates nitric oxide rapidly and quantitatively. 
GeNO makes use of premixed NO2 in either air or oxygen, at the concentration to deliver the therapeutic dose of NO to the patient. The NO2 can either be delivered from a premixed gas cylinder or, as in the case of GeNO’s portable system, from liquid NO2, which is in equilibrium with gaseous NO2. For the liquid source systems, the gaseous NO2 is first diluted with air or oxygen and then passed through the cartridge to generate nitric oxide at the therapeutic dose.
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