The second wave of Corona saw a severe shortage of medical oxygen in hospitals across the country. However, the central government is speeding up the supply of medical oxygen to states and all hospitals. The Center has issued a guideline for the use of medical oxygen on Thursday. Accordingly, oxygen is important for the treatment of severe patients because this virus affects the functioning of the lungs.
Shortness of breath or difficulty in breathing is one of the most common symptoms in severe corona patients. It also hinders the supply of oxygen to various parts of the body. Therefore such patients require oxygen, which is supplied through medical oxygen. Meanwhile, the Center has issued guidelines regarding its production, storage, and use.
How is Medical Oxygen Produced?
It has several methods. The most common method is to separate oxygen. This is known as the Air Separation Unit or ASU. ASU is a plant that separates large-scale gases. These plants use a method called the fractional distillation method to produce pure oxygen from atmospheric air, which contains 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen and the remaining 1% other gases. These include argon, carbon dioxide, neon, helium, and hydrogen. In this method, the gases from the air are separated into various states after cooling to the liquid state and then liquid oxygen is extracted from it.
What is an oxygen concentrator?
Atmospheric air is first cooled to -181 ° C. Oxygen is liquefied at this point. Since the boiling point of nitrogen is -196 ° C, it remains in a gaseous state. But argon has a boiling point similar to oxygen (-186 ° C) and so a significant amount of argon is also dried with oxygen.
The resulting mixture of oxygen and argon is dried, decomposed, and passed through a second low-pressure distillation vessel for further purification. Then we get the output as the final pure liquid oxygen, which is then transported using a cryogenic container.
What are cryogenic containers?
Cryogenics is the production and behavior of materials at very low temperatures. A cryogenic liquid is defined as a liquid with a normal boiling point below −90 ° C. Cryogenic liquid containers are specifically designed for safe and economical transport and storage of liquefied gases at cryogenic temperatures as low as -90 ° C. These containers are highly insulated, in which liquid gases are stored at very low temperatures.
What is the pressure swing absorption technique?
Oxygen can also be produced non-cryogenically in gaseous form using selective adsorption. This method takes advantage of the property that under high pressure, gases are attracted towards solid surfaces. The higher the pressure, the higher the adsorption of the gas.
Hospitals can also opt for on-site generation of oxygen by this method, where x oxygen is concentrated by concentrating with air. This has the added benefit of eliminating the need for transporting oxygen production to hospitals. In addition to the above sources of medical oxygen, there are also oxygen generators known as oxygen concentrators that can be used at home.
What safety precautions are to be followed?
If the temperature is high enough, many substances will burn in oxygen. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure proper fire safety measures and to train all employees in the safe handling of oxygen. There are also additional requirements and regulations for medical oxygen, in which a person needs a prescription to order medical oxygen.
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