The majority of the world’s industrial nitrogen and oxygen is created through large scale cryogenic separation at an Air Separation Unit (ASU). The product gases that ASU produce is normally sold to end users as a liquid at nearly -200°C and stored in thermally insulated vessels or it is evaporated to a gas and compressed at pressures up to 200 bar into steel cylinders.
Another method of supplying industrial nitrogen is with an on-site nitrogen gas generator. A gas generator carries several benefits over traditional supplies including safety, convenience and cost saving
Nitrogen generators utilize proprietary selective permeation membrane and pressure swing adsorption (PSA) technologies to produce high purity nitrogen from compressed air. Nitrogen generators are designed to continually transform standard compressed air into nitrogen as safe, regulated pressures without operator attention. An on-site N2 generator will eliminate all of the above problems and increase profitability, reliability and sustainability.
On-site gas generation offers a unique design and advanced energy-saving technology that requires less compressed air to generate more nitrogen. Substantially lower servicing costs, reduced downtime, and longer working life make it the most cost-efficient nitrogen supply available. Additional benefits include:
A well designed system can offer a payback period of 10 - 24 months and 50- 80% reduction in annual nitrogen expense is possible
Remove the dangerous tasks of handling 200 bar high-pressure gas cylinders and working with extremely low temperature -196°C of liquid nitrogen
Merchant Gas Supply vs On-site Nitrogen Gas Supply
Gas Cylinder $2.00 – $5.00 per m3
Dewar / PLC $1.00 – $2.00 per m3
LN2 Bulk Tank $0.30 – $1.00 per m3
Gas Generator $0.10 – $0.25 per m3
Reduce CO2 emissions by eliminating the electrically demanding fractional distillation process and frequent nitrogen deliveries from remote air separation plants
One of the main problems, when confronted with a traditional gas supply, is that generally there is no indication on the vessel or cylinder as to how much purity it contains and what flow rate is delivered. Beyond the highly variable costs of industrial gas, supply methods such as cylinders, dewars and bulk liquid storage also create significant challenges for businesses, as well as many additional and hidden costs, which ultimately impact on the bottom line compared to an on-site nitrogen generator.
An nitrogen generation system can reduce cost by up to 90% when compared to traditional methods of supply. If a company use liquid nitrogen was convert to gas generation technology, the new system could be expected to pay for itself in typical less than 2 years. For a company using cylinders, the payback period could be even earlier which less than 12 months in many cases.