News

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.

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.

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 Sihope 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.