There were several gray areas when our team started looking into sieve bed regeneration. One was the fact that none of us had ever focused on just the sieve bed in an oxygen concentrator before. We knew nothing of how the zeolite was packed inside, how many compartments existed inside, etc. On Monday and Tuesday we tried to solve that problem by revisiting Thyolo District Hospital and Zomba Central Hospital. We were based mainly in PAM, asking the engineers and technicians there about equipment details and examining some of the machinery for ourselves. It was actually really exciting to crack open one of the sieve beds and take apart all the components inside. We could finally start analyzing the zeolite and start experimenting with different regeneration methods. After the hospital visits, Isaac, Nafe, and sat down to brainstorm some ideas. Though the details of the design aren’t solidified yet, we’ve all agreed that an external device using hot air to dry out the moisture from the zeolite would be the best option.
On the hospital visits we went to the neonatal and pediatric wards to ask more oxygen concentrator specific questions. While speaking with the nurses at Zomba, we discovered more improvisations on oxygen distribution. The nursery has two working oxygen concentrators that over seven infants needed to use. Their solution is to increase the flowmeter from the standard 0.5-1 L (for one infant) to 4-5 L and using a splitter that could divide the main flow of oxygen from the concentrator into several streams. The issue is they couldn’t guarantee the flow rate/pressure going through each split. Since they’re using such a high pressure for their oxygen flow, the concentrators may someday accidentally cause harm to the infants by delivering too much oxygen. A good future project would be to design calibrated splitter that could control the flow rate of the split.
On another note, we invited all the interns over to have a barbecue on Saturday. Even though we only met a short while ago, it seems like we’ve all known each other for longer. It’s been so great getting to work with a group like this. It’s so different to the teams that I’ve worked in at Rice and the experience is looking to be an exciting journey.