Cryogenic gas plant

A cryogenic gas plant is an industrial facility that creates molecular oxygen, molecular nitrogen, argon, krypton, helium, and xenon at relatively high purity. As air is made up of nitrogen, the most common gas in the atmosphere, at 78%, with oxygen at 19%, and argon at 1%, with trace gasses making up the rest, cryogenic gas plants separate air inside a distillation column at cryogenic temperatures (about 100 K/-173 °C) to produce high purity gasses such as argon, nitrogen, oxygen, and many more with 1 ppm or less impurities. The process is based on the general theory of the Hampson-Linde cycle of air separation, which was invented by Carl von Linde in 1895. The main purpose of a cryogenic nitrogen plant is to provide a customer with high purity gaseous nitrogen (GAN), liquid nitrogen (LIN), liquid argon (LAR) and high purity argon PLAR at high purities, along with extracting trace gasses like krypton, xenon and helium. High purity liquid material such as oxygen or nitrogen produced by cryogenic plants is stored in a local tank and used as a strategic reserve. This liquid can be vaporised to cover peaks in demand or for use when the plant is offline. Argon, xenon and helium are usually sold to customers in high pressure tank cars or trucks directly due to the smaller volumes. Typical cryogenic nitrogen plants range from 200ft3/hour to very large range plants with a daily capacity of 63 tonnes of nitrogen a day (as the Cantarell Field plant in Mexico). The cryogenic air separation achieves high purity oxygen of more than 99.5%. The resulting high purity product can be stored as a liquid and/or filled into cylinders. These cylinders can even be distributed to customer in the medical sector, welding or mixed with other gases and used as breathing gas for diving. The plant also produces nitrogen which is used for ammonia production for the fertilizer industry, float glass manufacturing, petrochemical usage, Purge gas, amine gas treatment, Bearing seal gas, and polyester manufacturing.