Hospital makes 2000 litres of oxygen per minute from natural air

As the Covid-19 second wave sweeps India, the New Civil Hospital in Surat has installed a Pressure Swing Adsorption plant for producing medical-grade Oxygen to treat Covid patients.

Surat:Surat's New Civil Hospital has installed a Pressure Swing Adsorption plant for producing medical-grade Oxygen. The plant produces 2,000 litres of medical oxygen every minute by filtering natural air.

The hospital consumes 60 tons of oxygen every day while the city needs around 250 tons of oxygen. Earlier, the Central government approved the plant which uses a foreign technology to compress natural air and extract oxygen. This plant is also the biggest one in the state of Gujarat.

The Plant Superintendent Nimesh Verma told ETV Bharat that the plant compresses natural air and extracts oxygen from it after separating it from Nitrogen and Carbon dioxide and other impurities. After removing Nitrogen, Carbon dioxide and other gases, the oxygen is filtered and supplied through pipelines to the hospital.

The plant generates 5 to 7 per cent of the total oxygen being consumed by the Corona patients.

The Central government has also allocated Rs 201.58 crores for setting up 162 Pressure Swing Adsorption plant in the country. So far 30 such plants are functioning in the country. According to available information, there are five plants in Madhya Pradesh, four in Himachal Pradesh, three each in Chandigarh, Gujarat and Uttarakhand, two plants each in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Kerala, Maharashtra, Puducherry, Punjab and one plant in Uttar Pradesh.