IIP Dehradun sets up compact oxygen plant at Pune for treating Covid-19 patients

As several parts of the country struggle with a shortage of oxygen for treating Covid-19 patients, CSIR-Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP), Dehradun, has set up a compact medical oxygen plant in Pune that can be configured for monitoring in real-time

As several parts of the country struggle with a shortage of oxygen for treating Covid-19 patients, CSIR-Indian Institute of Petroleum (IIP), Dehradun, has set up a compact medical oxygen plant in Pune that can be configured for monitoring in real-time.

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The plant, an upgraded version of the traditional pressure swing adsorption (PSA) technology, was started on Friday at the Aundh Chest Hospital, Pune. By adding a vacuum element to the PSA technology, scientists at IIP, a constituent laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), an autonomous body under the Government of India, have been able to make the plant more compact, more efficient and operationally economical.

“The PVSA innovation is intended to support the national crisis response to the pandemic. A compact oxygen plant will require less energy and less space. Such a smaller machine is ideal for hospitals where space is a constraint,” said Anjan Ray, director of CSIR-IIP, who led a team of nearly a dozen people involved in various aspects of the project. The oxygen purity level of this system was found to be 96%, as against the medical requirement of 90-96%.

The unit was fabricated by CSIR-IIP’s licensee and engineering partner, Gaskon Engineers, in New Delhi. Bharat Forge Ltd, a Pune-based engineering company, helped integrate the new plant with the hospital’s ongoing oxygen supply network.

The CSIR team from National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, provided on-ground expertise to ensure oxygen purity, flow rate and pressure were delivered to patient requirements.

Nitin Bilolikar, civil surgeon of Pune and joint head of the health department of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) confirmed that the oxygen plant has been set up at Aundh Chest Hospital and attached to the supply for patients.

In a regular PSA system, the air is sucked in, pressurised and passed over adsorbents that can separate nitrogen and other component gases. The purified oxygen is then supplied to oxygen tanks and cylinders. However, the adsorbents or molecular sieves which trap the nitrogen, have to release this nitrogen (“desorb”) towards the end of each cycle so that fresh air can be taken in again for separation. This is a time-consuming process.

“Vacuum is one of the best ways of rapid desorption, enabling the bed of sieves to be emptied of the adsorbed nitrogen. Compared to PSA systems that simply depressurise for nitrogen release, vacuum makes the system more efficient. The advantage is at a very molecular level,” said Ray.

For every 100 molecules of oxygen present in the air taken in by a traditional PSA system, around 15 molecules of pure oxygen is generated. The PVSA, on the other hand, can deliver 30-35 oxygen molecules per 100, Ray explained.

“Professor Ray had sent a plant to Pune and our job was to enhance the performance of the plant for improved reliability of oxygen supply and safe connectivity to patients,” said Moonish Ghuge, vice president, Kalyani Centre for Technology and Innovation, the research and development wing of Bharat Forge.

Ghuge and his team ran the plant in their lab for 72 hours and simulated situations to ensure the supply was consistent and a failure would not affect patients.

Another feature of the system is that it can be monitored remotely. “The system works on the principle of Internet of Things. The idea is to get the system to talk to us and give us real-time analysis. This will help us in predictive maintenance and for further design improvements over time,” said Ray, adding that a patent has been filed for the system.

The PVSA system is supported with the principles of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), which is a control system architecture comprising computers, networked data communications and graphical user interfaces (GUI) for high-level process supervisory management.

“While the first unit at Aundh was set up as a field demonstration unit and first run for several months on the CSIR-IIP campus at Dehradun, we plan to scale it up and deploy larger sizes of 500 LPM and more over the next few months. The long-term goal is to build an intelligent oxygen delivery and management network,” said Ray.