Tannuka Juneja
Solaire Initiatives Pvt Ltd, a tech start-up has made a device that can produce oxygen from water. The device, OM Redox, is installed at the Webel-BCC&I Tech Incubation Centre in Kolkata, West Bengal.
The co-founder of the start-up, Soumyajit Roy and his wife, Dr Pei Liang, said that it’s a “deep science innovation that generates oxygen, which is 3.5 times purer than that one normally gets from a concentrator.”
The device was selected by the Department of Biotechnology to be showcased and launched on its 10th founding day and first Bio-Tech Expo 2022.
“Pressure swing adsorption method for production of oxygen works with the liquefaction of air, while concentrator operates through concentration of air by a compressor and then passing it through a catalyst. In these two processes, oxygen is generated from the air. Ours is an alternative technology,” said Roy, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Kolkata.
Roy said his invention was called pneumatically coupled water oxidation by electrocatalytic reaction (power) in which the life-saving gas is produced from water.
The machine is one of the products featured in a book published by Union Science and Technology Minister Dr Jitendra Singh on the 75th anniversary of independence.
“This technology is patented and approved by World Health Organization and European Conformity,” he claimed, adding that the scientific duo are in talks with several companies to license, manufacture and market the device.
“The product is a sleek white pinewood box, weighing 8 kg, which provides oxygen just on pressing a switch and runs with electricity and also with a battery back-up of 3.5 hours,” said Pei Liang, a bachelor of medicine from a Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China.
“We are actively considering the proposal for manufacturing and marketing of the device that produces oxygen. We are positive about the technology and impressed with its simplicity of it. Even a girl or boy can operate the device. Given the progress that the start-up has made, commercialisation of the device is expected in the next three months,” West Bengal Electronics Industry Development Corporation Limited (Webel) Managing Director Sunrita Hazra said.
