Atmospheres to PSI Converter
Common Conversions
| atm | psi |
|---|---|
| 0.1 | 1.47 |
| 0.5 | 7.348 |
| 1 | 14.696 |
| 2 | 29.392 |
| 5 | 73.48 |
| 10 | 146.96 |
| 20 | 293.92 |
| 50 | 734.8 |
| 100 | 1469.6 |
| 150 | 2204.4 |
| 200 | 2939.2 |
Why this conversion matters in chemistry
Of all the pressure units a chemist runs into, psi is the only one defined directly through force per unit area — pounds of force on a square inch of gauge face — rather than through a fluid column or a coherent SI definition. A fresh nitrogen cylinder delivered at about 150 atm reads something like 2200 psi on the regulator, which is worth knowing when sizing a gas manifold or estimating how long a cylinder will last at a given flow. High-pressure hydrogenations and supercritical-fluid work routinely run at hundreds of atm, where the psi number on the gauge starts looking large and the conversion to atm becomes the thing that keeps a PV = nRT calculation honest.
Formula
Worked Examples
Standard atmospheric pressure — the baseline on any sea-level pressure gauge.
The typical delivered pressure of a full compressed-gas cylinder of nitrogen or argon.
A modest vacuum, still within reach of a water aspirator at the tap.
The kind of pressure a sealed hydrogenation reactor runs at for a high-pressure reduction.