Chennai: Production of oxygen at the Vedanta Group’s Sterlite copper smelter plant in Thoothukudi was hit due to a technical snag on Friday.
A press release from Vedanta said “a technical snag has developed in the cold box at our oxygen plant in Thoothukudi, leading to a temporary pause in production”.
The possibility of minor technical fluctuation was anticipated given that the plant has been unattended for three years, it said.
“In preparation of this scenario, a technical expert group has been onsite from day one to monitor the situation and provide realtime solutions for resuming production at the earliest,” the release said.
“We plan to return to stabilised production soon,” it added.
The snag has occurred a day after the Group transported its first consignment of 4.80 tonnes of medical grade oxygen, with 98.6 per cent purity, from its plant to Tirunelveli.
Days after the Tamil Nadu government granted permission for the Vedanta Group to re-open its Sterlite copper smelter plant to manufacture oxygen alone, the company started producing liquid oxygen from May 12 and the first batch was sent to Tirunelveli yesterday.
Sterlite Copper CEO Pankaj Kumar in a release said. “we are pleased to announce that the first batch of medical-grade oxygen has been dispatched from our plant in Thoothukudi.”
“In view of the crisis, our focus was on commencing the production of liquid oxygen at the earliest which has been implemented immediately. One of our oxygen plants has commenced production from May 12 and the first tanker carrying 4.8 tons of liquid oxygen was sent to Tirunelveli,” he added.
“We will be dispatching two oxygen tankers on a daily basis to begin with and gradually scale this up as we expand production,” he added.
The plant was closed since May 2018 after 13 anti-sterlite protestors were killed in a police firing. Citing the unprecedented shortage of oxygen for Covid
patients across the country, the company approached the Supreme Court seeking nod to re-open the plant to manufacture oxygen alone to meet the demand.
The Tamilnadu government had convened an all party meeting and gave the nod in line with the Apex Court’s order and also formed a monitoring committee to ensure that the company manufactures oxygen alone and that no other unit was re-opened.
After overhauling the oxygen plant in a short span of time, the company started producing oxygen from the plant.