India’s Steel Industry and its imperative role of supplying life-saving oxygen

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With the surge of COVID-19 pandemic, medical oxygen has been a life-saving measure in the treatment of coronavirus-infected patients. In this hour of need, the Steel industry in the county has been leaving no stone untouched to augment the production of Liquid Medical Oxygen (LMO).

Continuing with the increasing trend of augmenting LMO production, steel companies in India crossed the milestone mark of 4000 metric tonnes a day with 4076.65 MT of medical oxygen supplied to various states across the nation yesterday. It is notable that by mid-April 2021, the average LMO production was 1500/1700 metric tonnes /day. The landmark fate was achieved by reducing the production of Nitrogen and Argon and by boosting the production of LMO by the Steel companies.

The production of oxygen in Steel plants

Primarily, steel companies require gaseous oxygen for steel making and for oxygen enrichment in Blast Furnaces along with basic purposes like lancing and gas cutting. Therefore, Integrated Steel Plants have specially designed Captive Oxygen Plants to produce primarily gaseous products of oxygen, nitrogen, and argon routed through Pressure Reduction & Management System (PRMS) to meet the desired pressure during the steel making process. These plants can produce 5% to 6% Liquid Oxygen (LOX) at maximum, which is considered as the highly pure form of oxygen. By sacrificing some gaseous oxygen and through optimizing process parameters these steel plants can ramp up liquid oxygen production.

Reducing safety stock to boost medical oxygen

Normally, steel plants are required to have 3.5 days of safety stock of liquid oxygen in their storage tanks which gets vaporized and only gets used if the oxygen plant develops some problem. Further, continuing the efforts to combat the viral infection, the steel sector has reduced the safety stock to 0.5 days to augment the supply of oxygen to every corner of the country.

“All out efforts are being made to enhance the production of liquid oxygen and for dispensing the same for which all oxygen plants whether in private or public are working 24×7 and dispensing oxygen. Steel plants are also filling oxygen cylinders and supplying to the States/hospitals,” the Ministry of Steel informed in an official statement.

Further, for the faster mobilization of LMO, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) has directed certain numbers of nitrogen and argon tankers to be converted to carry oxygen. As of April 25, there are 765 nitrogen tankers with a capacity of 8345 MT and 434 argon tankers with a capacity of 7642 MT. Permission for converting portions of them for carrying oxygen has been issued by Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organization(PESO) to remove the major hindrance in LMO transportation.

The joint Public and Private steel sector oxygen push

Striving every effort to supply the liquid oxygen to different states, Steel plants in both the public and private sectors have significantly increased the production of medical oxygen.

Steel Authority of India (SAIL)

Steel Authority of India (SAIL) has raised the average delivery of Liquid Medical Oxygen to over 1000 tonnes/day. Enhancing the LMO supply, SAIL from its integrated steel plants at Bhilai, Bokaro, Rourkela, Durgapur, and Burnpur, supplied 51,128 tonnes of LMO from August 2020 till yesterday. The authority has shut down its Bhilai Steel Plant for a short period to enhance its liquid oxygen production by 15MT.

Meanwhile, SAIL’s Rourkela steel plant has set up a 108-bed oxygenated COVID care centre for the employees and the family members of the plant, playing an important role in the management of the pandemic.

Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd

Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Ltd, a government-owned steel producer supplied 8842 tonnes of LMO in FY 20-21.

In this financial year, from 13th April till 25th April, more than 1300 tonnes of medical oxygen has been dispatched by the company with an average production of 140 tonnes of LMO increased from 100 tonnes.

Today, the firm has started the trial run to start the activities at the New ASU ( BOO) oxygen plant at Visakhapatnam Steel Plant for commissioning. The new oxygen plant has two units of 850 TPD with each having a production capacity of 50 MT of LMO.

JSW Steel Ltd

JSW Steel Ltd, a Mumbai-based steel manufacturer, has announced that the firm is reducing its output to augment liquid medical oxygen supply to 1200 tonnes a day and committed to producing more than 20,000 tonnes for the next month.

“At JSW, we are using all our resources to help our country battle the second wave of COVID. We are supplying 1200 metric tons of oxygen per day from our manufacturing plants to 9 states in India and touching lives of 20 lakh patients in 530 hospitals across India,” read one of the tweets of JSW Steel Ltd.

Tata Steel

Tata Steel has also ramped up oxygen production to 1,000 tonnes per day and has supplied over 25700 tons cumulatively till April end to various states and hospitals in India.

“Tata Steel has further increased supplies of Liquid Medical Oxygen to 800 tonnes per day. Our endeavor to fight against Covid continues. We are closely working with GoI and states to address the demand and save precious human lives,” the company stated in an official statement last week.

The firm has also committed to airlift 60 cryogenic oxygen tankers from foreign countries and will build around 400 oxygen generating units that can be used by hospitals in smaller towns of the country.

PM reviews the progress of converting nitrogen plant to oxygen plant

Earlier this week on Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi also chaired a meeting to explore the feasibility of converting existing nitrogen plants to produce oxygen to augment the supply of medical oxygen throughout the country.

Identifying potential industries, 14 industries have been identified where conversion of plants is presently underway. Further, with the help of industry associates 37 Nitrogen plants have also been identified for the production of oxygen. Additionally, 1500 PSA plants are being set up through contributions of PM CARES, PSUs and others.

The nitrogen plants use Carbon Molecular Sieve (CMS) whereas Zeolite Molecular Sieve (ZMS) is required to produce oxygen. Therefore, by replacing CMS with ZMS along with few other changes such as oxygen analyzer, control panel system, flow valves, and more, existing nitrogen plants can be modified to produce oxygen.