This world always seems to get stuck in some work or other. Whether be it any technical issue or medical, whenever the world encounters any error it looks for possible solutions. And not to our surprise they always try to find help through Indian means (with the help of Indian people and techniques). 

As we all know, currently, we are experiencing a second huge wave of COVID and we are also facing the crisis of Oxygen in many hospitals of some states. To solve this problem, some young Indian Scientists from IISER Pune (public autonomous research institute) came up with a brilliant idea of generating oxygen from very cheap and easy means to solve the ongoing crisis.

First, let us try to understand the process of generation of Oxygen in industries which will, in turn, make us easy to understand the whole process. There are basically three steps. The first and foremost step is the compression of air from the atmosphere. Air will be taken from the atmosphere and it will be compressed by the compressor. The second step is separation or filtration. This involves the extraction of Nitrogen gas from the compressed atmospheric air to get the maximum amount of oxygen left in the compressed portion of gas. As we know that our atmosphere consists of 78 percent of Nitrogen, 21 percent of Oxygen, and the rest are some other gases. So, if by any means, we absorb the Nitrogen then all we will be left with is the major amount of necessary Oxygen gas. This is done with the help of very good absorbent, silicon-based zeolite. Also, due to high pressure, Nitrogen becomes very vulnerable to absorption.

The third step is storing, which is a very crucial step in this process. The storing must be done cryogenically. This is because if we fill a cylinder with cryogenic oxygen, then it will be equal to around 860 cylinders of non-cryogenic oxygen in amount. Cryogenic means “very cold”. The cryogenic oxygen has too much high density. 

Now coming back to the innovation of our scientists, which provides 5 to 7 litres of oxygen which is the normal requirement of a patient. They are using mainly Sodium Percarbonate, which is generally found in houses for cleaning stuff. I am not describing everything regarding that reaction because it is exothermic and if anyone tries to perform it without any precaution then it will be harmful. Everything is packed in a box and then that box releases the required oxygen at the required time after initiating the reaction. I wish good luck to all those young brains for their selfless effort.