If Vedanta were to deliver on its promised 1,050-tonne per day (tpd) of medical oxygen from its sealed Sterlite Copper smelter complex in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu’s entire projected need of 650 tpd would be taken care of, with some to spare for Kerala and Puducherry as well.
However, experts The Wire Science spoke to have said repurposing Sterlite Copper’s 1050 tpd wholly for medical purposes will require months, if not more than a year. Until then, the plants inside the copper complex will at best be able to gradually ramp up production to 60-100 tpd of liquid oxygen and whatever little extra it can supply as gaseous oxygen bottled in cylinders.
Vedanta’s oxygen, the experts said, will be prohibitively expensive, wasteful and logistically unwieldy. It is not just oxygen that is scarce, but also resources. Why produce expensive oxygen when the same money can be used to set up longer-lasting infrastructure for less expensive and readily usable oxygen in remote places that are at the tail-end of the oxygen pipeline?
Until the morning of May 25, the company had supplied only 21 tonnes per day of oxygen, totalling 150 tonnes over a week of production – against the promised 1050 tpd. For every tonne of liquid oxygen (LOX) produced, Vedanta produces and throws away 10 tonnes of gaseous oxygen. In these seven days, it has emptied nearly 1,500 tonnes of gaseous oxygen (GOX) into the atmosphere.
— source thewire.in | Nityanand Jayaraman | 26/May/2021