Bloom Energy is rehabbing old or broken ventilators and sending them to hospitals to help healthcare workers fight the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. NBC10’s Tim Furlong has the story.
An energy company is rehabbing old hospital ventilators to aid healthcare workers on the frontlines in the fight against the spread of the novel coronavirus.
Bloom Energy, a California-based company that specializes in making fuel cells and self-sustaining power plants for businesses, is taking a break from their normal work and focusing on fixing old devices that can save lives amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Employees at Bloom’s University of Delaware facility are repairing old or broken ventilators and sending them to hospitals.
“Charge them, calibrate the oxygen sensor, make sure the flow meter works, put them back in the box with paperwork and they’re sent to a hospital eight hours later,” Susan Brennan, the Chief Operations Officer of Bloom Energy, told NBC10.
Brennan said every state seems to have a stockpile of older or out of warrant ventilators and Bloom has the skillset to get them back up and running quickly.
“Bloom Energy has done an amazing job at taking their existing facility in Newark, Delaware, and California and using their mechanical engineers to take ventilators that had been sitting for 14 years, servicing them, updating them, getting them certified and into service,” Senator Chris Coons (D-Delaware) said.
Governor John Carney is also pleased with their work.
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“That’s a very good development,” Carney said. “It will increase our capacity significantly with ventilators which is a critical component of the care required to save lives.”
