Ukraine continues fighting the coronavirus pandemic. With a new wave of COVID-19 cases, most of hospitalized patients need oxygen. To address the need, Metinvest Group continues to support health care institutions in the cities where it operates, as well as in other regions of the country.
Four Metinvest enterprises, Zaporizhstal Iron and Steel Works being one of them, produce life sustaining oxygen. Every day, Oxygen and Compressor Shop of the enterprise supplies an average of 40 tonnes of liquid medical oxygen. Not long ago, on peak days, steel makers would supply twice as much of oxygen to the hospitals.
To save a patent's life, oxygen goes a long way. To make a high-quality product, each production phase has to be carefully monitored.
Air flows through the filters to compressors, where it is compressed and supplied to the air separation unit. It is there that air is split to nitrogen, oxygen, argon and other inert gases. One of the separation products is liquid oxygen, which is pumped to a 600 m3 tank with a storage capacity almost 680 m3 of oxygen. Trucks with cryogenic tanks are filled there to transport liquid oxygen to medical institutions.
The production process is controlled by the air separation plant (ASU-60) specialists. It has a capacity of 60 m3, or 3 tonnes of oxygen per hour. Daily production amounts to 72 tonnes of liquid oxygen.
Since they have started supplying oxygen to the hospitals, mill workers had more work to do because each dispatch of an oxygen truck requires filling out a number of forms that guarantee high quality of the certified product. In the past, product quality was inspected once per shift, whereas now liquid oxygen quality control is done for each truck.
The production process includes continuous product analysis to detect harmful substances and check the quality of oxygen. Specialists of the chief utility engineer office control the process of medical oxygen production in accordance with the established requirements. Not one vehicle can leave the site until the quality of transported medical oxygen is checked and confirmed by the assigned specialist of Zaporizhstal Tatiana Sidorenko. It is not only the oxygen but the vehicle is also checked for compliance with the regulatory requirements.
Today, we dispatch about five trucks per day, which makes c. 50 tonnes. The end of October was quite intense time for us as we dispatched 80-90 tonnes of oxygen per day.
— Andrey ZAPISOV, Oxygen Shop Manager.
According to him, the filling time depends on the capacity of the truck with cryogenic tanks. For instance, an 8 tonne truck can be filled within one hour and 10 minutes. To fill a 20 tonne truck with liquid oxygen, it takes 2.5-3 hours.
In hospitals, a tonne of liquid oxygen goes through a cryogenic vaporizer to be transformed to 850 m3 of gas, which is a daily supply of oxygen for 141 patients.
In April 2021, PJSC "ZAPORIZHSTAL" obtained a registration certificate from The Ministry of Healthcare of Ukraine for production of liquid oxygen for medical use. Since then, the steel mill has been supplying oxygen to the hospitals on a free of charge basis.
Metallurgical enterprises of Metinvest Group supply oxygen to medical institutions in 14 regions of Ukraine. The geography of such aid expands each week. Recently, Metinvest began to supply oxygen to the hospitals of Ivano-Frankivsk and Zakarpattia regions.
