Oxygen is a tasteless, odourless and colourless gas that is highly essential to living beings’ bodies to burn food molecules. It is imperative in medical science as well as in general. For maintaining life on the planet, oxygen’s prominence cannot be ignored. Without breathing, no one can survive. Every mammal can remain alive without water and food for days but NOT without oxygen. Oxygen is a gas that has innumerable industrial, medical and biological applications. As we manufacture medical oxygen generators utilizing the best quality materials for hospitals, we get asked a lot of questions regarding why it makes sense for a hospital to invest in a medical oxygen generator.
In this article, we have compiled some of the most important queries and tried to answer them here in a concise format.
Why is oxygen so vital?
In the human body, oxygen has various roles and functions to play. Oxygen is absorbed by the bloodstream in the lungs and is transported to every cell in the body. Oxygen’s contribution to maintaining the numberless biochemical activities cannot be ignored. In respiration and metabolism of living beings, oxygen plays a crucial role. Also, oxygen plays a significant role in the oxidization of food to release cellular energy.
Suppose one is unable to breathe in oxygen of appropriate level, it may result in different health disorders such as shock, cyanosis, COPD, inhalation, resuscitation, severe hemorrhage, carbon monoxide, breathlessness, sleep apnea, respiratory or cardiac arrest, chronic fatigue, etc. To treat these conditions in the patients, hospitals need oxygen especially manufactured for medical applications. O2 therapy is also given to artificially ventilated patients. To meet these needs, the best option for hospitals is to install their own on-site medical oxygen plants.
As hospitals need the highest standards of quality and purity of oxygen, it becomes imperative for them to install an oxygen generator plant that can produce high purity oxygen. By installing on-site generators, hospitals get rid of the susceptible delays in the delivery of gas cylinders which, sometime, could prove costly, especially in the case of an emergency.
Is the oxygen produced in on-site oxygen generator pure and same as the cylinder oxygen?
Oxygen produced by our machine uses the PSA (pressure swing adsorption) process. This process has been used for producing medical grade oxygen since the 1970s and is a very mature and well-established technology. Zeolites molecular sieves are used to separate constituents of air such as nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, etc. Argon and oxygen cannot be easily separated, and hence the oxygen from this plant will contain argon also. However, argon is inert and does not affect the human body when dispensed with oxygen. It is like breathing nitrogen (78% of the atmosphere is nitrogen). Nitrogen is also inert, like argon. In fact, the oxygen humans breathe is only 20-21% in the atmosphere with largely the balance being nitrogen.
Oxygen that comes in cylinders is of 99% purity, and it is produced in bulk quantities using a cryogenic separation process. However, as explained earlier, cylinder oxygen and oxygen from our machines can be used interchangeably without worries.
Are there any commercial benefits to installing the oxygen generator at a hospital?
In most cases, the simple answer would be yes. Barring large cities with abundant cylinder suppliers, the cylinder costs are quite exorbitant and drain any hospital or medical facilities’ finances on a recurring monthly basis. Furthermore, operators don’t usually wait for cylinders to get empty before changing them before the night shift to avoid having cylinders go empty in the middle of the night. This means that unused oxygen is returned back to the merchant even though it has been paid for.
Our sales team helps medical facilities do a Return on Investment (ROI) calculation, and we find that in over 80% of the cases, the hospital or nursing home will recover their investment in less than 2-years. With our oxygen generators having a life of 10+ years, this is a remarkable and worthwhile investment for any medical facility to make.
Let’s say the delivered price of an oxygen cylinder is around Rs. 200. Why do we say delivered? Because the final tax paid delivered price will also have the cost of freight included, which is important because freight isn’t inexpensive and has to be considered. So, if the hospital is consuming, let’s say 10 cylinders daily, they are spending – Rs. 200 x 10 cylinders x 365 days per year = Rs. 7.30 Lacs per annum. For this hospital, they will easily recover the cost of an equivalent oxygen generator in less than 2-years for sure.
Besides commercial benefits, how else does a medical facility benefit from installing an on-site oxygen plant?
There are several benefits, and we present them below:
Safety
Oxygen generator produces gas at very low pressure and also keeps only a small amount of backup in certified storage tanks. Hence, the risk of oxygen combustion is minimized.
On the contrary, oxygen cylinders have a large amount of oxygen in one cylinder, compressed to very high pressure. Constant handling of cylinders introduces human risk and risk of repeated stress failures, leading to very risky situations.
On installing an onsite oxygen generator, handling of cylinders is drastically reduced, and the medical facility improves its safety.
Space
Oxygen generators take up very little space. In many cases, the room for cylinders storage and manifold is sufficient for installation of the oxygen plant also.
If a larger hospital is a liquid oxygen tank, a large amount of clear space is wasted because of statutory norms. This space can be reclaimed by switching to an on-site oxygen plant.
Administrative burden reduction
Cylinders require constant reordering. Once the cylinders are received, then they need to be weighed and quantities verified. All of this administrative burden is eliminated with our on-site oxygen generator.
Peace of mind
A hospital administrator’s and the biomedical engineer’s biggest worry is running out of oxygen cylinders during critical times. With an on-site oxygen generator, gas is automatically produced 24×7, and with a carefully designed backup system, the hospital no longer has to worry about going empty.
CONCLUSION
Installing oxygen gas generators makes sense for hospitals because oxygen is a life-saving drug, and every hospital must have it round the clock. There have been a few cases when the hospitals did not have the required level of oxygen backup in their premises, and the consequences of that were extremely bad. Installing MVS oxygen generator plants make hospitals free from the worry of running out of oxygen anytime. Our generators are easy to operate and requires little to no maintenance.
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About MVS Engineering Limited
MVS Engineering is a turnkey supplier of Gas generation equipment for Nitrogen, Oxygen and Hydrogen gases. We also manufacture Air, Gas, Liquid Dryers and Gas Purification systems. MVS is the largest supplier of gaseous Nitrogen, Oxygen and Hydrogen plants in India. Besides India, MVS also regularly exports its equipment to the Middle East, Africa, South East Asia and Europe.
MVS was founded in 1977 and, for the last 45+ years, we have supplied over 8000 skid-mounted units worldwide. To read more about the company, visit our website.
