Commercial sorption-based air separation is usuallydone using nitrogen selective zeolites in pressure swing adsorption (PSA) systems. Separation of air byadsorption of less abundant oxygen is more desirable. In this studywe have developed some stable oxygen selective sorbents with silver and cerium salts. AgCl, AgBr, AgI and CeCl3 all showed stable adsorption characteristics with pure component selectivityof O2/N2 ∼ 2.0–3.0 at 1 atm. For these salts heat of adsorption of oxygen was found to be slightly higher than that of nitrogen, which was also predicted byab initio molecular orbital calculations byChen and Yang (Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 35 (1996) 4020). The adsorption capacityof these salts was increased bythermal dispersion on high surface area SiO2 support. AgBr thermallyspread on SiO2 is the best sorbent obtained in this study. AgBr/SiO2 (1.0 g/g) showed a pure component oxygen selectivity of ∼ 3 at 1 atm and ∼ 5 at 7 atm. PSA simulations were used to show the feasibilityof nitrogen production using AgBr/SiO2.