Hiranandani Hospital first private facility in Mumbai to have PSA oxygenator plant

Dr L H Hiranandani Hospital at Powai has become the first private hospital in Mumbai to have its in-house pressure swing adsorption (PSA) oxygenator plant.

Aaditya Thackeray, Maharashtra’s Minister for Tourism and Environment, virtually inaugurated the plant on Wednesday. “This is a situation where all people have to come together to fight the virus. Both the public and private sectors have to work together to tide over the crisis. This is only a beginning, and there is a greater need for PSA generators in Mumbai,” he said.

PSA oxygenator is a machine that extracts oxygen from the atmospheric air, by a process of filtration of nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and other impurities. The oxygen is then transferred to a tank and compressed at a pressure of 4 bar. This is next pumped into the hospital’s gas manifold and then to the hospital oxygen pipeline. The equipment installed in the hospital provides 700 litres of oxygen per minute and the purity is 94 to 05%. The equipment is manufactured in India.

Darshan Hiranandani, the architect of the project and managing director of Hiranandani Group of Companies, said the project was the need of the hour and there would be a second machine installed after some time. “Such generators would reduce the dependence of private organisations on the government, who is already handling several contentious issues,” he said.

Dr. Niranjan Hiranandani, founder and managing director, Hiranandani Group, and the chief managing trustee of the hospital, said that newer medicines such as monoclonal antibodies were now available at the hospital and also extra corporeal membranous oxygenation was being used for critically ill COVID-19 patients.