The millilitre per minute is a unit of volumetric flow rate equal to one millilitre passing a point every minute. Its symbol is mL/min. It is the working unit of clinical medicine and of analytical chemistry, two fields in which the quantity delivered matters far more than the speed of delivery.
Intravenous infusion is the clearest case. A drip is set in millilitres per hour for slow fluids and in millilitres per minute for fast ones, and an infusion pump is programmed with a rate and a volume. A litre of saline given over four hours runs at about four millilitres per minute; the same litre given rapidly in an emergency may run at a hundred.
Liquid chromatography works in the same range. A conventional analytical column is run at one millilitre per minute, a figure so standard that it appears as a default in almost every published method. Narrower columns run proportionally slower, and the flow must be held steady to within a fraction of a per cent, because the time at which a compound emerges depends on it.
Anaesthetic and oxygen delivery use the unit too, though there the fluid is a gas. Oxygen therapy is prescribed in litres per minute, and the small adjustments within that are made in hundreds of millilitres per minute. In each case the rate is a prescription, and the equipment exists to hold it constant.
Sixty millilitres per minute is one millilitre per second, so the conversion between the two is the same factor as between minutes and seconds. That relationship makes it easy to move between the fast and slow ends of the same equipment: a pump specified in millilitres per minute can be reasoned about in millilitres per second by dividing by sixty.
For everyday scale, a millilitre per minute would fill a teaspoon in five minutes and a cup in four hours. It is a rate slow enough that watching it is uninformative, which is why the instruments that use it display a totalised volume as well as a rate.
One millilitre per minute equals about 0.01667 millilitres per second, 60 millilitres per hour, or 0.001 litres per minute.
| Unit | Symbol | 1 Milliliter per minute equals | 1 of these equals | Converter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Milliliter per second | mL/s | 0.0166666666667 mL/s | 60 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Milliliters per second |
| Milliliter per hour | mL/h | 60 mL/h | 0.0166666666667 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Milliliters per hour |
| Liter per second | L/s | 0.0000166666666667 L/s | 60000 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Liters per second |
| Liter per minute | L/min | 0.001 L/min | 1000 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Liters per minute |
| Liter per hour | L/hour | 0.06 L/hour | 16.6666666667 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Liters per hour |
| Cubic millimeter per second | mm³/s | 16.6666666667 mm³/s | 0.06 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic millimeters per second |
| Cubic millimeter per minute | mm³/min | 1000 mm³/min | 0.001 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic millimeters per minute |
| Cubic millimeter per hour | mm³/hour | 60000 mm³/hour | 0.0000166666666667 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic millimeters per hour |
| Cubic centimeter per second | cm³/s | 0.0166666666667 cm³/s | 60 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic centimeters per second |
| Cubic centimeter per minute | cm³/min | 1 cm³/min | 1 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic centimeters per minute |
| Cubic centimeter per hour | cm³/h | 60 cm³/h | 0.0166666666667 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic centimeters per hour |
| Cubic meter per second | m³/s | 0.0000000166666666667 m³/s | 60000000 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic meters per second |
| Cubic meter per minute | m³/min | 0.000001 m³/min | 1000000 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic meters per minute |
| Cubic meter per hour | m³/h | 0.00006 m³/h | 16666.6666667 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic meters per hour |
| Cubic inch per second | in³/s | 0.00101706240158 in³/s | 983.22384 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic inches per second |
| Cubic inch per minute | in³/min | 0.0610237440947 in³/min | 16.387064 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic inches per minute |
| Cubic inch per hour | in³/h | 3.66142464568 in³/h | 0.273117733333 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic inches per hour |
| Cubic foot per second | ft³/s | 0.000000588577778733 ft³/s | 1699010.7954 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic feet per second |
| Cubic foot per minute | ft³/min | 0.000035314666724 ft³/min | 28316.84659 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic feet per minute |
| Cubic foot per hour | ft³/h | 0.00211888000344 ft³/h | 471.947443167 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Cubic feet per hour |
| Fluid ounce per second | fl oz/s | 0.000586584662131 fl oz/s | 1704.78375 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Fluid ounces per second |
| Fluid ounce per minute | fl oz/min | 0.0351950797279 fl oz/min | 28.4130625 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Fluid ounces per minute |
| Fluid ounce per hour | fl oz/h | 2.11170478367 fl oz/h | 0.473551041667 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Fluid ounces per hour |
| Gallon per second | gal/s | 0.00000366615413832 gal/s | 272765.4 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Gallons per second |
| Gallon per minute | gal/min | 0.000219969248299 gal/min | 4546.09 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Gallons per minute |
| Gallon per hour | gal/h | 0.0131981548979 gal/h | 75.7681666667 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to Gallons per hour |
| US Gallon per second | gal US/s | 0.0000044028675393 gal US/s | 227124.70704 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to US Gallons per second |
| US Gallon per minute | gal US/min | 0.000264172052358 gal US/min | 3785.411784 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to US Gallons per minute |
| US Gallon per hour | gal US/h | 0.0158503231415 gal US/h | 63.0901964 mL/min | Milliliters per minute to US Gallons per hour |