Both Oxygen Concentrator & Oxygen Cylinder Essential for Reliable oxygen supply: WHO

11

Nov

Both Oxygen Concentrator & Oxygen Cylinder Essential for Reliable oxygen supply: WHO

Meenakshi Sharma

Oxygen Concentrator and Oxygen Cylinder are both essential for a reliable supply for Covid patients facing breathlessness, for anesthesia and other serious patients. The importance of oxygen concentrators and oxygen cylinders depends upon the circumstances. Oxygen concentrator is economical source of supplying oxygen backed up by oxygen cylinder in case of power failure. An oxygen concentrator is a medical device that takes in this air, filters it through a sieve, releases the nitrogen back into the air, and works on the remaining oxygen. Thus the device concentrates oxygen from surrounding air. Normal airspace has 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen and 1 percent other gases.

According to the WHO (World Health Organization), there is a need of high concentration of oxygen during and after anesthesia in case patient is child, old, sick or anemic. It is easy to concentrate oxygen as air already contains around 20.9 % of it. If a 5 liters per minute oxygen is enriched, a concentration of 80 % may be easily achieved.

In case of an emergency, the Industrial-grade oxygen used for welding could be used for enrichment of a draw-over system. It has been widely used for this purpose.

As per Bhartiya Cryogas, India's leading manufacturer of Air separation plants, Cryogenic oxygen plants, Liquid oxygen plant, oxygen plant, there are two main sources of oxygen for medical purposes. They are: Cylinders derived from liquid oxygen and Concentrators which separate oxygen from air. Concentrators are highly recommended for remote hospitals that cannot obtain oxygen cylinders on a regular basis. However in case of power failure, the flow of oxygen from the concentrator will stop in few minutes putting patients at risk on a life support system. So in case of power cuts, cylinders are best suited for supply of oxygen. So the best practice for maintaining continuous supply of oxygen is based primarily on concentrators, but with a back-up supply from cylinders.

The Sahibabad in Uttar Pradesh based Bhartiya Cryogas is one of the top oxygen plants manufacturers. It is also a leading producer and exporters of medical and industrial gas plants including oxygen, nitrogen and acetylene. There has been sharp demand for setting up of oxygen factories or plants from government and private run hospitals. Now oxygen has become big business. Several new companies have mushroomed in India to fulfill the rise in demand for medical grade oxygen. A new ecosystem has developed for the manufacture of oxygen plants, oxygen plants suppliers, oxygen cylinder filling plants, oxygen production plants. So what is the cost of setting up an oxygen plant? According to Bhartiya Cryogas, a plant that can supply 24 cylinders worth of gas per day could cost on an average of Rs.33-40 lakh of a capital. It could be completed in about a month's time. How much oxygen is required per day on an average in a middle sized hospital? A 240-bed hospital with 40 ICU (Intensive Care Unit) beds, ordinarily uses around 550 LPM (Liter per Minute) worth about Rs.5 lakh per month.

How is oxygen manufactured?

There are several techniques to produce oxygen for commercial use. The most oxygen plants manufacturers in India use the separation of air using either a cryogenic distillation process or a vacuum swing adsorption process to manufacture commercial grade oxygen. Nitrogen and argon are also produced by separating them from air. This method is called electrolysis and produces very pure hydrogen and oxygen.