Oxygen Generator Planning 101
Hospitals in India are rushing to install Oxygen Generators to supplement existing O2 supplies — Oxygen cylinders / Liquid Oxygen deliveries. This sudden uptick in demand has caught the suppliers and hospital unprepared. Majority of hospitals still depend on cylinders.
Currently hospitals operate via liquid oxygen supplied in tankers to the on-site oxygen tank. This is then supplied via the medical gas piping system to oxygen outlets across the hospital. Majority of the hospitals though operate via cylinder banks connected to the medical gas piping system. The cylinders are refilled and replenished locally on a daily basis. Some hospitals use liquid oxygen as primary source and cylinder bank as back up.
According to ISO 10083 a hospital needs 3 independent sources of oxygen supply. This can be a cylinder bank, liquid oxygen, Oxygen concentrators or oxygen generator or a pool of cylinders kept as reserve / back up that can sustain the hospital for the worst possible replenishment lead time scenario.
Oxygen supplied today in cylinders has a purity level of 99.9%. HTM Standards and European Pharmacopoeia, edition 7th, 2011 provided oxygen definition as 90–96 % concentration in volume for oxygen concentrators and generators. The reminder mainly is consisting of argon and nitrogen.
The capacity of the generator is measured in Nm³/h. Oxygen generators can be designed for various capacities starting from 10–20 Nm³/h to 1000’s of Nm³/h depending on the requirement of the hospital.
Here are some best practices while estimating the capacity and design of the O2 Generator
> Max Capacity and avg. capacity estimation.
Generally hospitals estimate an average consumption in terms of the number of cylinders or based on frequency of tanker refills. However this does not account for peaks and lows in consumption. Consumption changes based on inpatient load, ICU loads, between day and night. When you have a cylinder bank or a liquid oxygen reserve, these peaks and lows can be managed. However for an oxygen generator which generates oxygen into a reserve tank which can only store oxygen for a few minutes to a few hours at max, its important that the consumption patterns across the day and across weeks be mapped.
You also need to account for total number of Oxygen outlets across wards. For Peak consumption assume 10 lpm across all out let. For optimum consumption plan 2 lpm in neonatal and pediatric wards, 6 lpm in general wards and 10 lpm in ICUs, OTs, emergency and casualty wards. This should give you optimum consumption.
Your planned capacity for generator should at minimum cater to optimal consumption and have options to rapidly increase product to peak levels for pandemic and disaster relief situations.
> Multi Channel, Modular concept
Your O2 generator solution provider should be able to provide you with a modular solution allowing you to add more channels to augment capacity. This can be because of hospitals adding more floors, beds or a new block. You should not need to buy a different stand alone unit for capacity augmentation.
I would recommend having one channel catering to optimal requirement and the other allowing you to meet peak requirement.
> Cylinder filling station
It would be great for hospitals to also have a cylinder filling station. You can set up the system to fill the cylinders when the hospital consumption is less than the capacity or use the second channel for the same. Hospitals can generate revenue by acting as a cylinder supply hub for nearby nursing homes, clinics, ambulance services and smaller hospitals.
The filled cylinder can also act as the thier
> Automatic switch over
You should also design the system to automatically change over to another channel or cylinder bank for maintenance or break down. That will ensure zero disruption to the oxygen requirements in a hospital.
> Power Consumption & Savings
Well designed and good quality generators normally consume 1.1–1.5 kW/m³. On a long term basis, in comparison with cylinders it gives overall cost reduction up to 80%.
Sandeep Naik is the co-founder of Atto Innovations — a company that is influencing engagement models between MedTech companies & hospitals from product discovery to end of life of the device.
The platform has an active community of medical device companies, hospitals, doctors, purchase managers and biomedical engineers — Doctor’s Bazaar, and products such as Atto CMMS — an installed asset & clinical engineering management system for hospitals and Atto Market : an e-commerce application for MedTech industry.
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