FREO2 Solar could reduce oxygen costs by 86% for communities without electricity.
By Dr. David Peake
Graphic design by Harriet Read
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought the world's attention to the blight of respiratory infections and the global pneumonia crisis. As the leading infectious killer worldwide, pneumonia is considered the "forgotten killer", responsible for 2.6 million deaths in 2017. Medical oxygen is a proven and extremely cost-effective intervention, demonstrating a 35% reduction in mortality for patients with pneumonia and has been shown to be twice as cost effective as vaccination.
Many communities living in low-resource settings face the challenge of oxygen shortages, due to having very poor or no energy supply. Groups around the world have investigated the use of ‘traditional’ solar installations for oxygen delivery – using large solar panels to produce excess power which is stored in large lead-acid battery banks for use during periods of low solar insolation. Although this is an effective strategy, it also requires a significant capital investment in solar panels, charging circuits, power inverters and environmentally damaging lead-acid batteries. The cost of a system such as this can range between $12,000 and $30,000 USD to power a single oxygen concentrator.
FREO2’s Solar is a novel approach to solar powered oxygen. Leveraging existing FREO2 technologies, it uses DC power directly from photovoltaic panels to power a custom oxygen concentrator where the AC compressor has been replaced with a BLDC compressor. Excess oxygen produced during periods of high solar insolation is then stored in low-pressure oxygen storage, removing the need for an inverter and large battery banks which correspond to a significant portion of the cost and causes of failure in traditional solar systems. FREO2 Solar is targeting smaller health facilities, which may have more sporadic oxygen demands and where a larger Solar installation would be overkill.
Although Solar is in the early prototype phase, we are aiming for an installation cost of around $4000 USD. This system would be well suited for stabilising oxygen availability at rural and geographically distant healthcare centres without access to grid electricity, allowing healthcare workers to provide oxygen in areas with the highest pneumonia burden. Over this quarter, our focus has been on increasing Solar’s oxygen production capacity and ruggedising the system for shipment to Uganda for technical testing with our in-country partners.
Watch the video below to see how our Solar innovation works!
Animation by Harriet Read
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Music: Uplifting Corporate by RinkevichMusic
https://soundcloud.com/rinkevichmusic
Video Link: https://youtu.be/Q3HMZ6RHLSA
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