Covid Pandemic: Army Engineers Find WayTo Convert Oxygen Into Low Pressure Gas

To resolve the issue of transporting liquid oxygen in huge cryogenic tanks, a team of Indian Army engineers have accomplished the task of converting it into low pressure oxygen gas and ensuring its availability at patients' beds, thus providing immediate relief to Covid affected people.

Under the guidance of Major General Sanjay Rihani, the engineers team put together for early execution of an innovation to ensure that oxygen is made available without the use of gas cylinders, thus obviating the need to refill them frequently, Defence Ministry sources said.  

Over a period of seven days, the team in-direct consultation and material support from CSIR and DRDO, put together a working solution using vaporisers and liquid oxygen cylinders. In order to ensure continuous conversion of liquid oxygen into oxygen gas at the requisite pressure and temperature at the Covid bed, the team used a self pressuring liquid oxygen cylinder of small capacity (250 litres) and processed it through a specially designed vaporiser and directly usable outlet pressure with requisite leak proof pipeline and pressure valves. 

A prototype with two liquid cylinders capable of feeding oxygen gas for 40 beds for a period of two to three days has been made functional at Base Hospital, in Delhi Cantonment. The team has also tested a mobile version to cater for typical shifting requirements in hospitals.

The system is economically viable and is safe to operate since it obviates high gas pressure in the cylinders and does not require any power supply to operate. The system is capable of replication in a quick time frame.