SAIL enhancing daily oxygen supply limit to 1,100 metric tonne;to set up additional 2500 hospital beds

NEW DELHI: Steel Authority of India (SAIL), one of the largest domestic steel producers, has been enhancing its capabilities to supply Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO) in the country.

The daily delivery of LMO from its integrated steel plants situated at Bhilai (Chhattisgarh), Rourkela (Odisha), Bokaro (Jharkhand), Durgapur and Burnpur (West Bengal) has been increased from a level of about 500 Metric Tonnes (MT) in the 2nd week of April to more than 1100 MT per day currently.

The company, standing strong with the nation, has so far supplied around 50,000 MT of LMO. In the month of April, 2021, SAIL has delivered more than 17500 MT LMO to 15 states across the country including the states in which the plants are located.

Till date, 14 nos. of “Oxygen Express” carrying more than 950 MT LMO have been loaded for various parts of the county from SAIL plants at Bokaro, Rourkela and Durgapur. SAIL plants have also received tankers, which have been airlifted and after loading have moved to their destinations by road and rail.

With arrival of ISO tankers, SAIL facilities have delivered these tankers after suitable conversion and modifications at the delivery points. Production of LMO at SAIL facilities are being ramped up by optimizing process parameters. The production and delivery are taking place 24×7 at SAIL plants.

In addition to supply of LMO, SAIL is going to set up additional 2500 hospital beds with the support of gaseous oxygen (GOX) for Covid treatment in addition to the facilities currently available at SAIL’s five integrated steel plants at Bhilai (Chattisgarh), Bokaro (Jharkhand), Rourkela (Odisha), Durgapur and Burnpur (West Bengal)., outside its current medical facilities.

These jumbo facilities are being planned outside the existing hospital facilities and shall have oxygen support through a dedicated gas line drawn directly from the steel plants instead of extracting gaseous oxygen from liquid medical oxygen as is being done in the own hospitals of SAIL currently.

At the suggestion of Government of India, SAIL shall use Gaseous Oxygen directly as an additional source of oxygen as the demand for liquid medical oxygen is high currently.

These 2500 nos. of beds will be developed in phased manner in collaboration with the respective state governments. In the first phase, the company will set up about 700 beds which will be scaled up to 2500 beds across all the five locations.

Currently, there are around 3000 beds in the five SAIL hospitals and about 45% of beds have been earmarked for COVID patients.

The company remains committed to stand by the nation in fighting against the corona pandemic in every possible way.