Why Medical Oxygen Generator Makes Sense For medical facilities.
Oxygen is a tasteless, odorless and colorless 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. Oxygen is a gas that has innumerable industrial, medical and biological applications. Having installed several oxygen plants during the period of covid, this article seeks to outline the benefits of having an oxygen generator plant.
Advantages of Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) plant
There are two obvious advantages of the technology — the first is that the hospital gets a captive plant that can generate all the oxygen it needs, doing away with the need for cylinders etc.
Handling cylinders also has a safety aspect to it as oxygen under high pressure is highly inflammable. Several fires in Covid-19 hospitals across the world in the last few years have been grim reminders of those risks.
But what works very well for hospitals also is the fact that an oxygen generator is ‘clean technology’. The raw material that it uses is the ambient air. It also takes very limited space; the maximum area occupied by an oxygen plant is about 7 ft/9ft/7ft.
- 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 an 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.
Are there any commercial benefits to installing the oxygen generator at a hospital?
In most cases, the simple answer would be yes. 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.
Requirements for setting up an oxygen generator plant.
Initial cost of the Medical Oxygen Plant.
Initial costs for an oxygen plant will vary based on the consumption capacity that’s needed by the facility. Larger facilities with a higher consumption need for oxygen will automatically require a larger oxygen plant while a smaller facility will subsequently need a smaller oxygen plant. Consumption levels are determined by size or availability of ICU, nursery, HDU, theatres etc.
Space requirement for Medical Oxygen Plant.
If a hospital is currently using cylinders, it will likely not need additional space to set-up the oxygen generator rather than the space required for storing and handling the cylinders. In fact, the generator might be small in size and there might not be a need for moving anything around once its set-up and connected to the medical gas manifold.
Operating cost of Medical Oxygen Generator.
The operating cost of oxygen generator consists mainly of two components:
- Electricity charges
- Annual Maintenance Cost
Refer to the technical specifications provided by the manufacturer for the electricity consumption. A Comprehensive Maintenance Contract (CMC) could cost roughly 10% of the cost of the equipment.
Medical Oxygen Generator – Payback period & Yearly savings
The Return of Investment (ROI) on Oxygen Generators is excellent. On full capacity utilization the entire cost can be recovered within a year. Even at 50% capacity utilization or less, cost of investment can be recovered in under 2 years.
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 several 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 an oxygen generator plant makes hospitals free from the worry of running out of oxygen anytime. Our generators are easy to operate and requires little to no maintenance. Talk to us.
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