More firms chip in to help fill gaps in oxygen supply
MUMBAI: Companies ranging from steelmakers to refiners to logistics firms are extending a helping hand by retooling their processes to produce oxygen for the sick or transporting medical equipment as supplies at hospitals dwindle.
While Jindal Steel and Power and Vedanta group have volunteered to supply oxygen from their plants, Allcargo Logistics has volunteered to ship 90,000 tents, 20 lakh masks and 500 oxygen concentrators from Singapore for the Maharashtra government. The concentrators help produce oxygen from air.
As the coronavirus pandemic rages, India’s healthcare system is near breaking point, with thousands of critically sick people failing to secure treatment and hospitals turning away patients, unable to provide critical oxygen supplies. Responding to the crisis, several companies have decided to divert oxygen supplies from their plants to hospitals.
As of Friday, nearly a dozen firms, including Reliance Industries Ltd, Tata Steel Ltd, Indian Oil Corp. Ltd, Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd and JSW Steel Ltd, are supplying oxygen to hospitals. Industries use oxygen for combustion, oxidation, cutting and chemical reactions. To make industrial oxygen suitable for administering to humans, companies need to free it from all impurities.
Manufacturers prepare liquid oxygen with 99.5% purity, which is then stored in large tankers and transported to distributors in cryogenic tankers at a specified temperature. It’s then regasified and filled into cylinders by distributors. These cylinders are then dispatched to hospitals. “It is not possible to set up new oxygen manufacturing plants or expand existing ones at short notice. That has also aggravated the demandsupply issue,” said a Mumbaibased doctor, adding that with various firms pitching in, oxygen supply is being managed.
In a tweet on Friday, the German embassy in India said Linde and Tata group have managed to secure 24 oxygen transport tanks that will be airlifted to India in order to increase transport capacity from production sites to pandemic hotspots.
According to the Steel Authority of India (Sail), the company has so far supplied 35,000 tonnes of liquid medical oxygen of 99.7% purity from its plants at Bokaro (Jharkhand), Bhilai (Chhattisgarh), Rourkela (Odisha), Durgapur and Burnpur in West Bengal.
“We have more than 500 tonnes of liquid oxygen readily available at Angul. We can provide 100 tonnes/day to any government that needs it,” Naveen Jindal, chairman of Jindal Steel and Power Ltd, said in a tweet.
Vedanta Group has appealed to the Supreme Court to open its oxygen plant at Sterlite Copper unit in Tamil Nadu’s Tuticorin to produce 1,050 tonnes of oxygen per day. The plant was ordered to shut down in 2018 by Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board over environmental violations. According to news reports, however, the locals have protested against the company’s move.