State owned oil and gas firms are setting up Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) medical oxygen generation plants at 100 locations, to help meet the oxygen need in the country, petroleum and natural gas ministry said.
“The hospitals in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Goa, Kerala, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi will be covered under the initiative. The entire expenditure for these plants will be borne by the companies from their CSR fund,” petroleum and natural gas ministry said in a statement.
This comes in the backdrop of an acute oxygen availability crisis in the country amid a surge in covid infections, with hospital beds and medicines running out. The situation is alarming with the reported deaths of critically ill covid-19 patients due to low oxygen.
“These PSA plants will come in varying capacities to generate oxygen, catering to hospitals with 200 to 500 beds. They employ technology provided by DRDO and CSIR, absorbing nitrogen from ambient air to concentrate oxygen. The oxygen thus generated will be supplied straight to patients admitted in the hospital,” the statement said.
“Orders have been placed with the Indian vendors for these plants, and these will start becoming operational from this month itself, and by July, all such plants will come up,” the statement added.
Also, refineries are supplying oxygen and procuring cryogenic containers for transporting liquid medical oxygen. India has an installed refining capacity of 249.36 million tonnes per annum (mtpa) from 23 refineries.