Nitrogen Generation

Nitrogen is commonly used throughout industry as a dry and inert gas.

Previously supplied either in high pressure bottles or bulk liquid dewars and evaporators, the options were depending on long term rental of equipment and pre arranging deliveries ahead of time at the risk N2 supplies of running out.

Add to this the loses with liquid N2 through high pressure vent off to atmosphere and bottle pressures eventually falling beneath the application pressure and unsuitable to meet demand, meaning a reliable N2 supply was not always possible.

Nitrogen generation however can ensure your plant has a suitable N2 supply on tap with no prearranging deliveries or losses through high pressure vent off. Nitrogen generators supply on demand by use of compressed air into the generator and through a process of separation, removes the Oxygen molecules and leaving high purity Nitrogen.

This ensures a convenient, reliable cost effective uninterrupted supply, which is even cheaper to produce!

Benefits Include

High Purity Gas

Up to 99.999% – but can be adjusted on the touch screen to lower purities to suit your application. The lower the purity, the less compressed air is required, resulting in lower cost to produce N2.

N2 Supply on Tap

No limit to the amount of N2 that can be produced to suit your application. Once the generator system is sized correctly, the supply can be generated to run as required to suit your demands.

Lower Costs to Produce

Savings of up to 80% can be achieved with generating your own Nitrogen compared to bottled Nitrogen or Bulk Storage Liquid Nitrogen. No pre ordering, awaiting deliveries or risk of late supplies.

Lower Carbon Footprint

A more environmentally friendly option with no regular transport deliveries to site.

How Nitrogen Generators Work

A Nitrogen generator does not create Nitrogen gas directly – but by a process of separating N2 and O2 Molecules in compressed air (which contains approx. 78% N2, 21.% O2 and approx. 1% of other gases carbon dioxide, neon, and hydrogen). The separating process removes all other gas molecules and leaving the Nitrogen molecules, producing a high concentrate N2 Purity of up to 99.999%.

Nitrogen generation technology enables this separation process by providing compressed air to the generator with a design of either a semi permeable membrane or through a Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) design.

A PSA nitrogen generation uses an air compressor to supply nitrogen gas from atmospheric air. A PSA nitrogen generator then passes nitrogen gas through a column filled with Carbon Molecular Sieve (CMS). Oxygen and other trace gasses get adsorbed by the CMS, allowing nitrogen to pass through.

For a PSA nitrogen generator, two CMS columns are required, where one column is depressurised whilst the other column sends the air through the sieve at pressure. A series of pre filters ensures the quality of compressed air reaching the CMS is of a high quality to prevent damage of the CMS media.

The second N2 generation technology is a membrane nitrogen generator design, where compressed air is passed through a semi permeable membrane consisting of hollow fibres with pores small enough to prevent nitrogen molecules from exiting while, releasing other gas molecules. Again this leaves a high purity N2 Gas of up to 99.999%.

Which technology is best suited would depend on the purity, flow and pressure of the application.