Gallery, Projects and General > How to's

Ventilator

<< < (5/5)

AdeV:

--- Quote from: nrml on March 25, 2020, 06:06:21 PM ---
The easiest route to mass manufacture would be to produce an existing device under licence and perhaps pare it down to simplify the build. The custom electronics would again be a rate limiting step rather than the mechanical bits. It's doable given enough time, but that is something we don't have a lot of.


--- End quote ---

That's exactly the approach I was assuming - and not even "pared down". As today's news that Rolls Royce and BAE Systems are going to start manufacturing a device ("Project Oyster" - why Oyster? Oysters don't breathe....). I don't think the "complex electronics" would be a limiting factor either; these companies all deal with complex electronics (avionics, etc.) every day, a little ventilator control board or three, which have already been designed and tested, wouldn't overly tax them I don't suppose.


--- Quote from: The Grauniad ---One model, understood to be government clinicians’ first choice, goes by the codename Project Oyster and involves slight tweaks to an existing design by a little-known Oxfordshire firm called Penlon.
--- End quote ---

There's another design ("Project Penguin"????!) which is increasing production of an existing design; and Dyson's contract is to produce a brand new design - so they reckon it'll be at least a couple of weeks in the making, then getting regulatory approval before that one is available.

Link to article in the Graun.

Joules:
Sorry Ade, not on that post.   Don’t think I posted a link elsewhere, but a quick search should bring something up.

Ozwelder:
Hi Guys,

Just my 2c worth on using industrial oxygen for breathing issue.

The contaminants can come from the remnants of compressed oil that is used to lube the compressors.

Pure medical oxygen is made using compressors using vegetable oils which are harmless to human breathing in the compressed form.

Kudos to the OP for having a go ,but one must fully understand. In this case results could have been fatal as compressed oil ( the the compressed oxygen) is mixed in with the oxygen and its compression cycle.Other gases like nitrogen and argon are present in tiny amounts in the industrial oxygen mix.

So, now you know.

I had to wear a breathing rig while operating on some  some toxic material while working in the industry many,many years ago.

Oddly enough they called it a respirator then.

Ozwelder

chipenter:
A friend of a friend worked for British Oxygen Company who said that all oxygen in the uk was compressed on the same machines , but the bottles were filled in separate rooms and a sterile environment for medical use .

nrml:
Most of the larger consumers of oxygen in the health care sector use Vacuum insulated evaporators for the main supply and cylinders for back up and during patient transfers within and between hospitals. VIEs are built to allow a certain maximum flow rate and are sized according to requirement of the hospital. Oversizing them results in wastage of liquid oxygen to keep it cool not to mention the additional cost.

A few weeks back at Watford General hospital, they had a bit of a supply issue when they exceeded  their maximum flow and the pressure reducing valves in the VIE froze as a result. Following this, the MHRA issued a list of essential criteria for all new ventilator and CPAP device developers. This along with ''flattening the peak'' and better understanding of the Covid illness rapidly quelled the initial demand for ventilators.

Our hospital was offered a trial of a CPAP device developed by a Formula 1 team. I believe our engineering department had to turn them down because the oxygen consumption was so high that there was a risk of some of our VIEs failing if we had a number of these devices running simultaneously. Thankfully, we never were stretched for ventilator capacity despite having to use our Anaesthetic machines for a few weeks.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page