A new oxygen-generation system designed by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) was installed at Pobbathi Medical Centre at VV Puram in Bengaluru on Tuesday, July 27. The installation was carried out with the help of Electrowing Technologies, a Bengaluru-based company, and Give India foundation in association with Zerodha, an online investment platform. The plant was inaugurated by Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Commissioner Gaurav Gupta. After inaugurating the plant, the BBMP Commissioner appreciated the organisations’ effort in a tweet. “Appreciate that several organisations, NGOs, and donors have come forward to join hands with BBMP to fight COVID-19,” the tweet stated.
The IISc research team has designed the system based on a multi-species gas separation process for hydrogen production. The team includes researchers Arashdeep Singh and Anand M Shivapuji, led by S Dasappa, professor at the Centre for Sustainable Technologies. Last year, the team had conceptualised and developed an oxygen generation system that uses low power and meets the specifications defined by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoH&FW).
The system is designed for generating medical-grade oxygen at 50 LPM with oxygen purity around 93%. It is IoT-enabled (Internet of things) and can be monitored with a mobile signal from any location.
The process involves drawing ambient air through a compressor along with a conditioning system to remove any contaminants before separating oxygen. The separation happens within a twin-bed swing adsorption system integrated with small storage and discharge vessels and various safety systems. The oxygen produced fulfills the quality requirements prescribed by Indian Pharmacopeia and can be used in ICUs/CCUs/OTs and other clinical wards. The design, for a 50 LPM medical oxygen plant, has been made open-source. The Institute has also signed technology transfer agreements with four agencies from across the country for installing oxygen generation systems at various capacities (50 LPM to 1000 LPM) to meet the requirements of hospitals.
The IISc team is also seeking support to implement oxygen generation systems with uninterrupted oxygen and backup power-supply, at smaller 50-bed hospitals using the new system. Given the large number of primary and community healthcare centres spread across urban and rural environments, the IoT-enabled solution will help in the remote-monitoring of operations and large-scale deployment.