BENGALURU: In a major step towards self-sufficiency by the Bengaluru Railway Division, an oxygen plant that can generate up to 7.2 lakh litres of medical oxygen per day was launched on Thursday inside the premises of the Divisional Railway Hospital. It may be recalled that due to huge numbers of railway employees getting affected during the peak of the COVID outbreak, the 50-bed hospital had an acute shortage of medical oxygen and struggled to meet its daily requirement.
Bengaluru Central MP P C Mohan and Rajya Sabha MP K C Ramamurthy formally launched the plant.
An official release said, "The plant has a capacity of producing medical oxygen of 7,20,000 litres per day at the rate of 30,000 litres per hour. It can support the maximum peak requirement if any critical situation arises."
Chief Public Relations Officer, South Western Railway, E Vijaya said, “During the peak of the second wave, the Bengaluru Railway Hospital had a requirement of 4.5 lakh litres of medical oxygen per day. In just three months, the hospital incurred an expenditure of Rs 15 lakhs to procure them from outside.” The whole plant was assembled by Atlascopco in Pune.
The plant is based on Pressure Swing Adsorption Technology. Loksha K J, Business Partner at Bengaluru-based Prosere, which installed the huge plant here explained its operations to The New Indian Express. “It produces oxygen from the air around it. The plant is fully automated with one of its components, Oxygen Receiver, sending a prompt whenever pressure level inside falls below 4.5 (or 500 litres per minute). When that happens, the machine starts on its own with the Compressor drawing in the air and then sending it to a dryer. It then sends it to an Air Receiver after which it passes through three filters and then the oxygen is collected in a receiver. A pipe protected by two layers takes it to a control room from where it is connected directly to hospital beds.”
There would no excess supply and the machine starts producing oxygen only when the pressure prompt is sent, he added.
Earlier in his speech, Mohan lauded the tremendous service performed by employees of Indian Railways during the pandemic. “The hospital will be enormously benefited by the generator launched today,” he said.
The release added that the hospital treated 1359 patients during the first Covid wave and 1705 patients during the second wave. The jumbo cylinders had to be often sent outside the premises to be refilled by private concerns.