COVID-19
PETRUS SWANEPOEL – INFRASTRUCTURE SUSTAINABILITY MANAGER, SOUTHERN AFRICA; ALBERT KASSELMAN – TECHNICAL MANAGER, GARIEP; ROWAN CHRISTY – TECHNICAL MANAGER, CONSTANTIABERG; JAN-LOUW ENGELBRECHT – ELECTRICAL SPECIALIST, SOUTHERN AFRICA; CHRISTY VAN ECK – ELECTRICIAN, BLOEMFONTEIN; MEDICLINIC, SOUTH AFRICA
Using oxygen monitoring system during pandemic
Mediclinic Southern Africa operates a range of multi-disciplinary acute care private hospitals in South Africa and Namibia. Here, a team of Mediclinic engineers explain how SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) was utilised to monitor the real-time oxygen consumption of its facilities during the COVID pandemic.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread from country to country, South Africa prepared itself to face this devastating event. For the healthcare system, one of the necessities to survive the pandemic was to ensure a reliable source of oxygen was constantly available. The predictions were that oxygen
consumption could increase by ten times the maximum consumption previously experienced. As the pandemic evolved, the high oxygen demand from all the healthcare providers in the country put the two major oxygen suppliers under pressure to ensure a sustainable supply of oxygen across South Africa (Fig 1).
The looming reality of load shedding
and industrial action added further complexity to the provision of a safe and consistent supply of oxygen to healthcare facilities. To mitigate this risk, Mediclinic Southern Africa evaluated all its healthcare facilities to ensure it could safely manage the abnormal oxygen consumption. The risk assessment focused on two important areas, namely: l The capacity of oxygen available per hospital - this included delivery time and the number of emergency cylinders.
l The maximum flow rate that the oxygen system can handle - the
limitations are due to the pipe sizes, regulators, valves and evaporator capacity of the actual installation.
As a result of these evaluations, the cylinder capacity was increased, modifications were done to the oxygen reticulation and in some cases, the liquid oxygen tank capacity was increased. An additional risk identified is that each
hospital’s oxygen reticulation design is unique, and flow is limited to a critical flow rate. If this rate is exceeded, a risk exists that the entire oxygen system can fail. This value is known as the threshold value of the system.
Petrus Swanepoel
Albert Kasselman
•Petrus Swanepoel has been a regional technical operations manager at Mediclinic for the last 17 years and was recently promoted to infrastructure sustainability manager for Mediclinic Southern Africa. He achieved a National higher diploma in mechanical engineering in 1991 from Vaal University of Technology. In 2005, he was the founder member of the central branch of South African Federation of Hospital Engineering. In 2010, he received an Eskom eta Award for his contribution to energy saving. •Albert Kasselman is technical manager at Mediclinic Gariep. An experienced technical manager in the private hospital environment, Albert has a background in clinical engineering, mining, process automation and instrumentation. He has completed a National Diploma and B-Tech in electrical engineering and also completed
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Rowan Christy
Jan-Louw Engelbrecht
subjects in N6 National Diploma Mechanical Engineering and have a Certificate in Foundations of Business Management from the University of Cape Town. •Rowan Christy is technical manager at Mediclinic Constantiaberg. With a factory background in machine automation, design, improvement and maintenance, he developed his own SCADA system used at Mediclinic Pietermaritzburg. The time afforded to improve the SCADA allowed him to share in the development of the algorithms for monitoring the oxygen supply and consumption during the COVID pandemic. Having taken over the technical manager role at Mediclinic Constantiaberg recently, his SCADA programming time has been shortened, but his interest and passion in SCADA, automation, systems integrations and PLCs remains strong.
Christy van Eck
•Jan-Louw Engelbrecht is the electrical specialist for Mediclinic Southern Africa. A South African Federation of Hospital Engineering southern branch committee member for the past eight years, Jan-Louw studied electrical engineering in Cape Town and completed his apprenticeship at a German automation & control firm in Namibia, where he was raised. He is now a team member within the infrastructure sustainability department on Mediclinic Southern Africa, focusing on carbon reduction activities. •Christy van Eck has been employed by Mediclinic for the last 13 years. His first introduction to SCADA was the installation f power analysers on main transformers. Over the years, his knowledge on SCADA has grown, from trial and error and reading countless manuals.
IFHE DIGEST 2022
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