The Maharashtra government is banking on its own power generation company Mahagenco for supplying oxygen to the hospitals in the State. It is setting machinery with an investment of about ₹24 crore for producing medical grade oxygen.
Maharashtra State Power Generation Company Ltd is owned by the State Government and has an installed capacity of about 13,602 MW out of, which 10,170 MW is thermal generation. The company would be using its existing machinery at its ozonization water treatment facilities in the plants along with a few new machines to produce oxygen.
The Chairman & Managing Director of Mahagenco, Sanjay Khandare told BusinessLine that a power plant requires clean water for its various processes and ozone is used as a water cleaning agent. Ozone is a gas composed of three oxygen atoms (O3). The existing ozonization unit would be reconfigured to produce medical oxygen (O2) with help of new filters and compressors, he said.
Khandare said that in the first phase, Mahagenco’s Parli power plant has immediately set up an oxygen plant at Swami Ramanand Tirtha Rural Hospital in Ambajogai, Beed district with a capacity of 288 jumbo cylinders per day and 95.2 per cent purity. With the commissioning of this plant, on April 27, Covid affected patients in the Beed area have got some relief.
A similar plant with a capacity of 84 cubic meters per hour is also being set up at Parbhani Zilla Parishad Covid Hospital and will be operational next week.
Khandare said that earlier the idea was to set up a Covid field hospital in the power plant premises. But given the pollutants in the power plant area, that idea was abandoned. Energy Minister of Maharashtra, Nitin Raut suggested that if the machinery could be shifted from the plant to the hospital, the process of providing oxygen would be much easier,
Mahagenco is also exploring ways to set up bottling units at the power plant, but that will take over a month and up to Rs ₹24 crore, he added.