Quo Vadis, ICF? And, why?

 

The Japanese are playing pricey for the supply of trains for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Corridor on the back of them funding the project. The Ministry of Railways had done right to order the ICF to make two trains for the High-Speed line to establish the price line and to take a major step towards Atmanirbhrata. It would have been a welcome challenge for the ICF to venture into the Standard Guage territory and to make truly high-speed trains for 250kmph operations. The Vande Bharat was only a semi-high-speed design although scalable to 200 with some tweaking.

But the news goes that the ICF has handed over this godsent opportunity on a platter to the BEML. I have nothing against the BEML, they are competent people and can deliver what they have been asked to do. But so could the ICF, and at much lower costs. It is a shame that ICF thinks that they can’t do it even though they designed and manufactured the Vande Bharat train in a record time of eighteen months, a feat never seen before anywhere in the world.

Let me try to understand what could have gone wrong with and within the ICF. Surely, they are no less confident today than they were in the year 2018, when they made the Train 18. Probably the Railway Board thinks that the ICF can’t and have, therefore, ordered so. But what does the Railway Board know about the design department, the bold procurement system, and the shop floor skills of the ICF? And, indeed what do they know about the innovative engineers of the ICF? After all wasn’t it the same Railway Board that, in one of the worst ever libelous campaigns destroyed the careers and lives of the great team of ICF.

Even if the Railway Board allowed the ICF to make the 250kmph train, would the ICF officialdom have taken the risks that such an ambitious project entails? Haven’t they seen the fate that befell the bold decision makers of ICF in the aftermath of the wildly successful Train 18?

Let me recount the story lest it should remain unsaid.

Those were the days! O, those were the days, when the Integral Coach Factory, Perambur was a Temple of Modern India. It was on the must-visit list of foreign dignitaries. The Government of India would showcase it as a great feat of industrialization. The Chinese Premier, Chou-en-Lai, during his visit on the 6^th of December 1956 wrote thus:

“This is a modernized Coach Factory. It is worthwhile for the Chinese to come and learn. This factory is well-built and well-organised. The technology and training given are very good. It is worthwhile for the Orientals to take pride in it.”

Indeed, the ICF was a stellar symbol of the baby steps that a newly independent India was taking in becoming Atmanirbhar – steel plants, irrigation and power projects, national highways, a locomotive factory at Chittaranjan, space research, dozens of scientific laboratories, and of course the ICF. More was to come later. But ICF, from the word go, got into the act and has been an icon of innovation and large-scale production since then. The ICF has so far designed over six-hundred types of railcars and has manufactured over seventy thousand of them making it the largest rail-car builder in the world. Starting from a humble 75kmph Swiss Schlieren design the ICF went on to make 130kmph air-conditioned coaches, the 3-tier AC being a real innovation in the field of rail travel. It even delivered a rail platform for mobile missile launchers for the armed forces. It seamlessly integrated the German LHB in its production lines and delivered coaches for speeds upto 160kmph.

The Vande Bharat Express is the jewel in the crown not only of the ICF but of the entire nation. It immediately caught international attention for its futuristic design, the ultra-low cost, a third of international prices, and the speed of delivery, from concept to prototype in eighteen months. The train successfully upset the applecart of international players and delivered a proverbial iPhone at Android prices. It, on the other hand, also aroused departmental jealousies in some hearts, who would rather import than innovate. The reason was not only a chance at corruption in international purchases but worse, a total lack of confidence in our own abilities to think big and deliver. Sudhanshu Mani’s idea brought the edifice of the import lobby, vested interests, and naysayers crashing down.

Not to give up, the same lobby then launched a massive vilifying campaign against the team that had brought this dream train to life. It also, to justify its nefarious game, condemned the train itself, calling it energy-inefficient, an incomplete work, done through non-transparent tenders, needing improvement etc. A spate of Vigilance cases was filed against twelve senior officers, GM and lower down. Nothing came of these cases; the CVC trashed them all and reprimanded the Railway Ministry too. But the delay cost at least one officer, who could have gone to become the Chairman, Railway Board, his possible rise. They all suffered years of ignominy and social stigma, “They must have done something wrong, after all.”

In a brutal environment reminiscent of the Nambi Narayan case of ISRO, which delayed the cryogenic rocket engine for several years, the production of Vande Bharat Express was stalled for over three years – the dedicated design and shop-floor teams were scattered and the supply chain dried up with brilliant MSME entrepreneurs turning cynical. The saboteurs’ lobby was so strong and well-entrenched that even the PMO, through its interventions, could not find a quick way out of the mire.

To justify their actions even the CRB went on record, without data, that the Vande Bharat train made thus far wasn’t up to the mark, was energy-inefficient and that a level playing field was not provided in tenders. Indeed, the pioneering team had never claimed that they had made a prefect product; prototypes can be anything but. Then started a long-drawn process of revising the technical specifications to improve the design and revamp the tender conditions to create a level playing field. But much ado about nothing – there were mere cosmetic changes in the design and the same vendor emerged the supplier for series production too repeatedly in tender after tender. Several tenders were issued and cancelled, all this leading to a loss of over three years of production, a period during which at least fifty semi-high-speed Vande Bharat trains could have rolled out. But, whereas in the case of victimization of Nambi Narayan and loss of similar number of years at ISRO, the government has woken up and is fixing the perpetrators, those who sabotaged a far bigger national project, one that touches millions of lives, and one that the government now swears by, have gone unchallenged.

Do I, therefore, blame the ICF? Hmm..! They must have swallowed their pride to surrender such a great opportunity of becoming a true world player. Now, the BEML will become one albeit riding on the basic design of the ICF and sourcing from the ICF’s supply chain.

I wish you the best, BEML!

I don’t empathize with you, ICF! You could have tried harder.

                                        ---ooo---

Technology Roadmap – The Missing Link (by Shubhranshu, IRSME (Retd.)

Indian Railways is probably the oldest large living business enterprise in the country. It has seen, since its advent in 1850’s, linking of remote and hilly areas, when automobiles didn’t even exist. It has lived through hap-hazard growth under the British and the Princely States, each following their own whims and standards. The Indian Railways have survived partition, flourished due to project uniguage, massive expansion and consolidation, reorganisations, oil-crisis, new technologies of rolling stock, tracks, and signals. Indeed, over the last one hundred and seventy years Indian Railways has also consistently earned reasonable profits and even largely funded its own growth and technology acquisitions. It has cadres of dedicated engineers, non-engineers, and staff that are under permanent employment and are attached to it even in retirement.

Some of these strengths, however, have resulted in silos that seek to grow vertically rather than horizontally, never intermingling with the adjoining silos in collaboration. Due to such isolation from the surrounding interacting systems has arisen a parental love for one’s own assets, department, and associated technology paths. Therefore, while we have 160/180 kmph passenger coaches and locomotives for over two decades, the brand-new Vande Bharat being actually being in the same speed-bracket, we have never been able to run these even at 130kmph for any meaningful distances. The celebrated C&M Volume I (a track standard) specifies tracks fit for 130kmph, but only for select trains. All other trains are restricted to 110kmph even though the track is “130kmph fit”. How does a network planner plan the throughput on such routes?

The Vande Bharat Express, a semi-high-speed train has caught the attention of the nation like nothing else in the recent memory. A high-speed train is actually a low-hanging fruit. We have had these for decades. We now plan to build 200 and 250kmph trains notwithstanding the fact that we don’t have tracks even to test them, let alone operate them commercially. Trains can be built in walled factories that don’t have to run them; trains can even be procured from the private sector or imported. Indian Railways’ Production Units can design and build a 200kmph, or speedier, train without any technology inputs from developed countries. The knowhow exists, or can be quickly developed, and the available supply chain is competent enough. On the other hand, it is the private sector that is struggling even in the face of assured purchase contracts.

Tracks and bridges, however, have to be built at site and kept ship-shape right where they lie. Signals can be procured but must be maintained at site in most cases. It is therefore an issue of organisation-wide culture that nurtures high speed infrastructure. The practice of train and loco maintenance is confined to sheds and depots, where good systems are easy to develop and sustain. The practice of maintenance of tracks and signals must transcend geography and several layers of management right down to the last man in the field. The Konkan Railway was built with a speed potential of 160kmph, that too in a difficult terrain. But never did a single service run on its tracks at that speed even though trains already existed to exploit that speed potential. KRCL soon degenerated to 110kmph due to maintenance practices that were honed on 110kmph lines.

A High-Speed-Rail system is a composite system of modern rolling stock, high-speed tracks, and necessary signalling and safety systems. Most HSR systems have dedicated tracks, even in our country, whether it is the Mumbai-Ahmedabad HSR or RRTS Intercity. Investments are commensurately allocated in these systems in a holistic manner, not on departmental lobbying. Several disjointed projects to speed-up trains on our networks have failed to achieve even 130kmph. Several more are underway absorbing tens of thousands of crores. Unless there is a cultural and organisational transformation to permanently maintain such upgraded tracks to 130/160kmph standards, these upgraded routes will also meet the fate of the KRCL tracks. There is no sign of that coming even though Capital expenditure has been committed in ample measure.

It is the competitive resource grab that decides investments today. For example, with liberal budgetary support it has become an avowed target, nay a necessity, to modernise railway stations. Allocations for facelift for over a thousand railway stations, many of them in small or mid-size towns like Ranchi or Bhagalpur, are large enough for the facelift of the entire respective town. But the station facelift will go into granite and air-conditioned lounges, things that do not improve the experience of the average traveller and certainly do not improve train services or train upkeep, the raison d'être of a railway station.

We have had clamour for anti-collision systems for trains over the last many decades. The proposed system has undergone various name-changes and technology promises beginning from a fittingly-named Anti Collision Device to ETCS, Levels I and II, to the new and appealing name Kavach. It is estimated that a comprehensive Kavach installation on the entire network and on propulsion units may cost upwards of one and half lakh crore Rupees. Such massive investment is being committed on a technology that is not even proven over a short stretch. Does it make sense to duplicate the 300kmph ETCS Level II, albeit with an Indian name, on our routes and vehicles that are constrained to run at 110-130kmph for the next many decades?

We have procured expensive electric locomotives with 12000 horsepower that promised to transform freight traffic. But they turned out to be ineffective and needed to be assisted by diesel bankers in the very terrain they promised to conquer. This exposed not only poor understanding of traction engineering, but also irresponsible financial judgement. We continue to procure thousands of new freight electric locomotives without exploring how surplus passenger electric locomotives could be reconfigured to haul freight – a simple change in the gear-ratio, and software modification could have achieved that. Remember, large scale induction of Vande Bharat type trains and MEMUs will render a large number of passenger electric locomotives surplus. Yet investment in new locomotives continues unabated.

What is the way out of this ad hocism and unstructured investment planning? The Railway Ministry and the Board is manned by people of wisdom, who need to be trained, yes trained, to think for the organisation, not the department. A core team of engineers and finance experts need to draw medium and long-term technology maps that allocates resources on a need basis that ensures that all components of the Railway System grow like a manicured garden, not a hap-hazard shrubbery. Budget allocations, available and needed technologies, cash flow over the years, training of personnel, involvement of an assured supply-chain, make-in-India, and rates of return need to be laid down in hard numbers and measurable objectives. The core team will also be required to periodically examine the progress and benefits so that mid-course corrections can be done to optimise returns.

Only such a binding exercise will avoid situations like 160kmph trains that cannot run even at 130 as tracks and signals, curves and bridges do not match up. This technology plan should also aim at providing impeccable safety, robust communication systems, disaster management, and maximising throughput. Needless to say, the Railway Board must steer and vet this technology-map and reorganise investments accordingly for that is their job.

---ooo---

Technical Failures, or Managerial?

Comparing Boeing and Indian Railways

Early in my career as an engineer, and even earlier in my education, I was trained to look for patterns, or trends, while investigating failures. There could be failures of the lubricating system causing large scale damage to sub-systems, or of the gear trains, or piston-rings, or seals and rubber. There could even be workmen-level lapses indicating poor training, lack of shop-floor discipline, inadequate supervision. Most of these problem were easy to solve as they fell squarely in the domain of an engineer.

I also learnt that if failures are randomly distributed across various sub-systems and show no pattern or trend, they are difficult to pin down to root technical causes and frustrate the management no end. Therein lies the rub. These failures are not technical – they are manifestations of serious management deficiencies. Two such glaring examples that have come to light in recent times are that of the Boeing Company and the Indian Railways.

The Boeing Company

Two crashes of the Boeing 737 Max in quick succession that killed hundreds of passengers – On October 29, 2018 Lion Air Flight 610, a 737 MAX 8 plane crashed in the sea, 13 minutes after take off, killing all 181 aboard. On March 10, 2019 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, a 737 MAX 8 crashed, 8 minutes after take off killing all 157 aboard. These were attributed to software overcorrection of plane’s attitude. Then there were cases of a door-plug detaching causing decompression on January 5, 2024 on an Alaska Airlines Flight 1282, a 737 MAX 9. This was attributed to loose bolts! As Recently as on May 25, 2024 a Southwest Airlines Flight 746 experienced "an uncontrolled side to side yawing motion" called a Dutch roll at an elevation of 32,000 and the plane had to be landed urgently. On June 14 this year it was reported that some sub-contractors (contractors of contractors) had used spurious titanium in aircraft parts. Earlier In April, Boeing told the F.A.A. about a separate episode involving potentially falsified inspection records related to the wings of 787 Dreamliner planes. Boeing reported to the F.A.A. that it might have skipped required inspections.

Causes:

So, we have cases of inadequate testing of software, poor hardware (as in nuts and bolts), suspicious flight controls, inspections that were ignored and records falsified. Whereas these failures may be attributed to lapses on the part of individuals, contractors, teams and validation engineers, they, in the overall reckoning, point to a serious failure of management. The pressure of production and deadlines was so high on the management that sound technical advice was ignored and whistle-blowers penalised. The case of Sam Salehpour, a quality engineer at Boeing may be recalled, who was pushed back against and even threatened with physical violence, when he reported possible weakness in the fuselage of 787, the Dreamliner.

Let’s now come to the recent spate of accidents in Indian Railways.

To mention just a few:

On 2 June, 2023, Nearly 300 people were killed and over 800 injured in a horrific train derailment in Balasore, Orissa. The train derailed and an oncoming train collided with its derailed coaches. There was third train too involved in the crash, a freight train. derailment of 10 to 12 coaches of the Shalimar-Chennai Coromandel Express caused them to fall onto the opposite track. This was attributed to wrong wiring by low level signal staff at a Level Crossing Gate.

On 26 August 2023 the Lucknow-Rameshwaram Bharat Gaurav train which was stationed near Madurai Junction caught fire killing 9 and injuring 20. This reported cause was that the passengers smuggled a gas cylinder aboard the train and were cooking in the coach when the fire broke out.

On 11 October 2023 6 coaches of 12506 Anand Vihar Terminal-Kamakhya Junction North East Express derailed near Raghunathpur Railway Station in Buxar district of Bihar killing 4 and injuring more than 70.

On 29 October 2023 the Visakhapatnam-Rayagada passenger train derailed after colliding with the Visakhapatnam-Palasa passenger train near Kottavalasa Junction railway station in Vizianagaram district, Andhra Pradesh killing at least 14 and injuring 50.

Earlier, on 19 August 2017 the 18478 Puri–Haridwar Kalinga Utkal Express derailed in Khatauli near Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh. Killing at least 23 and leaving nearly a hundred injured. This was attributed to track defect.

As recently as on 17 June (today) a freight train hit the Kanchanjunga Express near Phansidewa in West Bengal. 5 people reported dead.

Causes of accidents on Indian Railways:

Enquiries are held in all railway accidents and causes that are established range from track defects, signal-failure, drivers-ignoring-signal, failure-of-interlocking, passengers-smoking-in train, to short-circuits. Most of the time some junior level staff is penalised, even sacked. Sometimes senior level functionaries are also transferred as in the case of the Balasore accident. But never is a management failure acknowledged, some of which could be poor training, departments working in silos, incompetent procurement system, ineffective inspections and supervision, insensitive human resources policies, total lack of communication with the field-staff apart from reprimands, obstructionist trade unions, senior officers occupying the same positions for long and so on. Even the much acclaimed administrative reforms, the introduction of a single service cadre, the Indian Railways Management Service (IRMS), which apparently picks the best of the best brains to head administrative units, has failed to make any impact. Loose statements like the “Kavach” safety system will eliminate accidents are made at the highest level. How Kavach will eliminate cases of faulty wiring, fires in coaches, poor track-maintenance, rolling stock defects is left unsaid. How multi-billion-rupee investments will improve the training, motivation, pride and morale of staff and officers is never discussed before committing such expenses.

Action at the Top:

Boeing has taken some measures to penalise the top management - Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun is stepping down along with several top-level executives. Boeing Chair, Larry Kellner, has announced that he will not run for re-election, and Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Stan Deal is also stepping down.

#Safety #Boeing # Boeing 737MAx #Railways #Balasore

5G is Here

I downloaded a full-length feature film in one-and-a-half seconds, just the way the Captains of Telecom Industry had been promising. And it came in all of its 8K glory with Dolby Atmos sound and subscripts in fifty languages. Subscripts in fifty languages! That was a bonus - something the Tech Masters forgot to mention.

So I pushed my luck further - tried to download a few more 8K full-length movies. My cellphone storage soon overflowed, its motherboard melted and drained out of the dynamic island that had a thoughtfully placed hole just for this purpose. Oops, that was the 200MP camera. I then decided to upgrade my kit. Got a new 5G xPhone Pro Max Doubleplus with a full TeraByte of storage and pushed my luck even further - downloaded 60 full length 8K movies in 90 seconds (1.5 seconds each, remember?) with VR interactive interface, where you can tell Ranbir Kapoor to let go of the trident and go wear diapers. The phone storage overflowed again. The phone didn’t melt, but was hot enough to fry an egg on. So hot that I dropped it and its VICTA glass screen shattered into nano-diamonds that I sent to carborundum guys to make grinding wheels with.

Yet my exploration of the ultrafast, superhigh-bandwidth, imperceptibly low-latency technology was only scratching the surface. So I decided to upgrade my man pad further. I got four thousand hard disc drives of 6TB each from Nehru Place. I got a massive discount with which I will buy a new tortoise shell comb sometime later. Then I got some ten thousand kilometers of special low-loss cables to connect all these HDDs to a central switch. GISCO helped me steal the special switch from their only installation at the All-Visible-Universe Weather Forecasting Superstation. Poor fellas, they are back to measuring PM2.5 in Okhla again.

I then got down to downloading all the movies available on Earth and on Trisolaris, and downloaded fifty seven thousand six hundred full length 8K movies in eighty six thousand four hundred seconds of the day. All the birds nearby fell down from the sky upon the spinning of four thousand magnetic discs that disoriented their navigation. Next time I will buy only SSDs, I promise.

Now, I have about one lakh fifteen thousand two hundred hours of movies at my disposal - just about thirteen years of continuous viewing, no meal and toilet breaks. Popcorn is on me. Please come over.

                                                 —ooo—

2+2 Always Equals 4

In my school WhatsApp group, just like yours, there are old friends of all hues, moods, and temperaments. During one of the idle discussions a friend got peeved at another one’s logical arguments and said, “You engineers know nothing. Two plus two is not always equal to four!” The friend, who had taken offence, is a PhD in liberal arts and can’t be taken lightly. But the other guy too is an IITian and couldn’t be dismissed either.

Now, liberal arts scholars, whether from social science, political science or international relations tend to look down upon engineers. No doubt liberal arts is an important educational and intellectual input to the society. It provides a solid ground for studying social behaviour, diagnosis of discords, resolving international turmoils, and tells us how to eliminate suffering that we see all around. Engineers (and Scientists, and mathematicians, and Doctors) provide the tools to achieve what the liberal arts prescribe. They provide the machines, means of production, enhanced agriculture, cure the sick and bring about a general improvement in quality of life. Engineers and Scientists, unfortunately, also create means and weapons of destruction, which the liberal arts scholars attempt to keep sheathed.

But, my objection to the two-plus-two argument, which is often flaunted by the social scientist to quieten the argumentative engineer, is a fundamental one. Why use the language of the engineer, viz. mathematics to beat him? The engineer, or the scientist doesn’t get that argument at all. For him two plus two always equals four. The debate then goes into a spin and ends up with the engineer frustrated and the social scientist flustered.

Let’s get it right once again - two plus two always equals four. So, by negating the kindergarten arithmetic no argument can be won. If a social scientist does lean on algebra to buttress his complex social debate, let him come up with his own equations with social variables, such as:

rich + rich = super rich

(rich + poor)/2 = middle class

intelligent+stupid = mediocre

fascism + suffrage = benign dictatorship

We engineers will understand them perfectly. 

Oxygen Generarors and Concentrators

It is heartening and greatly reassuring to see that thousands of oxygen concentrators and generators are being brought in from all over the world. This is, indeed, a life saving step and is rolling out faster than expected. But, there is an urgent need to plan for their upkeep and maintenance.

These devices are from diverse sources and are manufactured by different companies. They are electro-mechanical devices with pumps, compressors, valves, heaters and motors, which require attention and repairs. There would also be seals and gaskets, pipes and joints, all of which are prone to aging, deterioration and/or damage. With continuous working it is inevitable that these oxygen machines will require maintenance, upkeep, spare-parts and service sooner than later.

Hospitals, which have installed large oxygen generators and hooked them to their oxygen pipelines need to be extra alert. A malfunction or sub-optimal functioning may endanger lives even before it is detected, let alone repaired.

What should be done to avoid disruption in oxygen supplies? 

1. Find out the brand, manufacturer and model number of your equipment.

2. Check if there are service technicians available for such a device in your city or neighbourhood.

3. Every major hospital should have an engineer. Find out if such an engineer has familiarised himself with the equipment.

4. Find out the list of operational and maintenance spares and order them without delay - airlift them.

5. Insist on a single brand for your establishment. Train in-house personnel in operations and routine upkeep.

Again, remember such devices are only a stopgap arrangement for a hospital. Any hospital, worth its name, should quickly install liquid oxygen storage and necessary distribution system. It is much simpler and can often be serviced by in-house personnel with minimal training.

THE OXYGEN CONUNDRUM

Oxygen is available in plenty in the atmosphere. It doesn’t have to be extracted from deep mines or manufactured in factories. It simply has to be pulled out of thin air, literally and figuratively, either by liquefaction or concentration. Then why is there such a serious and seemingly insurmountable shortage of this lifesaving gas in our hospitals? The COVID crisis has exposed the ugly underbelly of our hospitals, both government and private. The government, as usual, has become the target of all curses and insults by the media and ignorant public, which finds it easy to criticise the government for after that all other responsibilities are shrugged and forgotten.

Even large hospitals are seen to be using banks of steel cylinders, heavy and unwieldy, which are connected to the hospitals’ oxygen manifold and serve individual patients. There is no reason they shouldn’t have installed liquid oxygen storage facilities given their massive requirements. Smaller hospitals place the cylinder at the bedside of the patient that need to be replaced every few hours. Typical steel cylinders for medical use in India come in two sizes – 10 litre and 40 litre. They are made from seamless tubes of expensive CrMo alloy steel since the gas in them is stored at 150 bars or higher pressure. These 10 litre and 40 litre cylinders may weigh up to 18 and 40kg and accommodate only 1500 and 6000 litres of free oxygen respectively. So, an 18 kg cylinder delivers only about 2kg oxygen and the larger one contains about 8kg. Besides, as the pressure in the cylinder drops the rate of delivery drops as well.

Now, imagine the logistic nightmare our medical oxygen supplies are burdened with - expensive steel cylinders which need to be manufactured at great cost and the volumetric and weight inefficiencies of the delivery system. A 20kg cylinder gives only 2kg oxygen and a 50kg cylinder gives just about 8kg after which they have to be sent back for refills. Liquid oxygen, on the other hand, converts to over 750 litres of usable free gas for each kg of liquid. Let’s compare the logistics:

Delivery System	Total Weight including Oxygen	Deliverable Oxygen	Weight Efficiency of Supply Chain
40 litre cylinder	40+8 = 48 kg	8 kg	125 lt/kg
10 litre cylinder	18+2 = 20 kg	2 kg	75 lt/kg
Liquid Oxygen	1 kg pure oxygen plus a proportionate weight of the cold supply chain.	750 lt	500-750 lt /kg

                 There is a small weight penalty for liquid oxygen too since it is delivered by cryogenic lorries.

I am not even mentioning the cost of expensive cylinders, which is actually an unnecessary burden on the national economy. Besides, cylinders have to be handled, when empty and carried back to refillers. With liquid supplies there will be no handling of heavy cylinders by hospital staff, who could be utilized elsewhere more fruitfully. Besides, industrial cylinders repurposed for medical supplies, as is being done now, should ideally be flushed and purged of impurities to match the “drug standards” of medical oxygen.

Considering that almost all oxygen, industrial or medical, is obtained cryogenically by liquifying atmospheric air to below minus 183 deg C and then regasified to fill the steel cylinders, it is easy to skip the bottling activity and deliver liquid oxygen directly to hospitals to be gasified on the spot. Indeed most metal industries and factories, which use oxygen, have an onsite storage of liquid oxygen. There is no reason all large hospitals, which have been in business for decades, shouldn’t have such a storage. Indeed, it is a criminal neglect. Liquid oxygen is delivered by road lorries in a cryogenic supply chain from the oxygen liquefaction plants to the end users. Modern cryogenic storage tanks have such efficient insulation that they are often built in the open facing direct sun, yet lose very little oxygen from the tanks. Liquid oxygen, as supplied to hospitals, will also be inherently more pure for the simple reason that impurities have different temperatures at which they become liquid. 

There are two ways in which liquid Oxygen can be introduced in hospitals:

1. Large hospitals should install multiple cryogenic ground tanks of capacities ranging from 20 to 40 tonnes. They will be refilled by liquid oxygen lorries periodically. This is also the way most industries procure and store oxygen. 

2. There is a need to design smaller cryogenic tanks, not unlike large thermos flasks,  that can be delivered prefilled with liquid oxygen from oxygen plants to smaller hospitals just the way we get Liquefied Petroleum Gas in our homes. These tanks will be swapped with empty ones and each hospital can even have a few spare prefilled tanks for handling contingencies, temporary shortages, or surge in demands. This can also be an interim arrangement for large hospitals till their larger tanks are built.

Most hospitals are already pipelined for handling such supplies. Cryogenic tanks can, in most cases, be accommodated in the same or less space that banks of oxygen cylinders take up today. Liquid oxygen is stored at much lower pressures than compressed gaseous oxygen and is actually safer in handling and storage.

There will be a need to build a fleet of cryogenic tanker lorries exclusively catering to medical needs since purity levels of medical oxygen are more stringent than industrial oxygen. In fact medical oxygen is legally a drug and must meet those requitements. 

An adult breathes in about 10,000 - 11,000 litres of air (20% Oxygen) in 24 hours. He will breathe the same volume of oxygen (99%) in that period. Forty and ten litre cylinders will last only 13-14 hours and 3-4 hours respectively. Hence there is a need to create an uninterrupted supply of oxygen, which can be ensured only with liquid storage.

A ten-tonne lorry that carries, say 200 large cylinders, delivers only 1600 kg of oxygen. A ten-tonne cryogenic lorry, on the other hand delivers six times as much. The liquid supply chain removes eighty lorries for every hundred from our roads as well.

To summarize, there is an immediate need to promote, rather mandate, storage of liquid oxygen in our hospitals forthwith. There is no shortage of oxygen even today. It is the cumbersome supply chain that has let us down. The solution is easy and is staring in our faces.

Let's do it.