Amid acute shortage of medical oxygen in the country in the fight against Covid-19, Megha Engineering & Infrastructures Limited (MEIL) has made arrangements to import 11 cryogenic tanks from Thailand.

These tanks, arranged by MEIL free of cost, will augment supply of Liquid Medical Oxygen to hospitals in Telangana. The first batch of 3 tanks landed at Begumpet Air Force Station here on Saturday and the remaining 8 tanks will reach here in few days.

Each cryogenic tank with 20,000 litres capacity would supply 1.40 crore litres of medical oxygen, and about 15.40 crore litres from all the 11 tankers.

Advisory committee

In addition to the MEIL management, Telangana Finance Minister T. Harish Rao, a team of senior officers of the advisory committee formed under Telangana Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar have been supervising the whole operation.

The Union Defence and External Affairs Ministry has granted permission for the smooth transport of these tankers from Bangkok. A Defence special flight that took off from Chandigarh picked up the tanks from Bangkok before reaching Hyderabad.

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MEIL is making all out efforts to bridge the gap between the supply and demand for medical oxygen to hospitals. It has imported these cryogenic tanks for the State government.

“Transporting liquid oxygen for medical purposes from the manufacturing plants to the hospitals is riddled with bottlenecks. Now these 11 cryogenic tanks will help the State to cater to the needs of the hospitals that are in dire need of oxygen,” P. Rajesh Reddy, Vice-President MEIL said.

While the Cryogenic tanks will cut short the time by facilitating bulk movement of medical oxygen to health care units, it takes about three months to fabricate a cryogenic tanker.

The MEIL management has kept all its other operations on hold and is concentrating on augmenting oxygen supply to both the Telugu States. Thus far, MEIL has supplied 3 crore litres of medical Oxygen from its manufacturing unit in Bollarum, which is in operation round the clock supplying oxygen to hospitals in Telangana, AP and Odisha.

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Empty cylinders each with a capacity of 7,000 litres of liquid oxygen are being filled and supplied to about 10 hospitals every day. On an average 400 cylinders are being supplied from it’s Bollarum facility. From May 9 to May 21, MEIL has supplied 29,694 Metric Tons of LMO which translates to 3 crore litres of oxygen.

Cryogenic liquids like oxygen and nitrogen are stored in the tanks with temperature up to (-196°C) with option for low and high pressure. The cryogenic air separation achieves high purity oxygen of more than 99.5 per cent.

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