Nitrogen is an inert gas that is suitable for a wide range of applications, covering various aspects of chemical manufacturing, processing, handling, and shipping.
Nitrogen is not reactive and it is excellent for blanketing and is often used as purging gas. It can be used to remove contaminants from process streams through methods such as stripping and sparging. Due to its properties it can be used for protection of valuable products against harmful contaminants. It also enables safe storage, usage of flammable compounds and can help prevent combustible dust explosions.
The applications of nitrogen compounds are naturally extremely widely varied due to the huge size of this class: hence, only applications of pure nitrogen itself will be considered here. Two-thirds of nitrogen produced by industry is sold as the gas and the remaining one-third as the liquid. The gas is mostly used as an inert atmosphere whenever the oxygen in the air would pose a fire, explosion, or oxidising hazard. Some examples include:
Food industry
Nitrogen gas is also used to provide an unreactive atmosphere. It is used in this way to preserve foods. As a modified atmosphere, pure or mixed with carbon dioxide, to nitrogenate and preserve the freshness of packaged or bulk foods (by delaying rancidity and other forms of oxidative damage like changing colours). Pure nitrogen as food additive is labelled in the European Union with the E number E941.
Light bulbs industry
Bulbs should not be filled with air since hot tungsten wire will combust in presence of oxygen. You can’t maintain vacuum either or external atmospheric pressure will break the glass. So, they must be filled with non-reactive gas like nitrogen. We can use inert gases like argon or helium instead of Nitrogen, but they are more expensive & rarer than nitrogen.
Fire suppression systems
Fire suppression is achieved by reducing the oxygen concentration where the fire will extinguish, while remaining at a level acceptable for human exposure for a short period of time.
Stainless steel manufacturing
There are various instances when nitrogen can be added to steel during steelmaking such as melting, the ladle processing and the casting operations. Nitrogen effect on hardness, formability, strain ageing and impact properties.
Tire filling systems
Nitrogen is used to inflate race car and aircraft tires, reducing the problems caused by moisture and oxygen in natural air. Nitrogen is less likely to migrate through tire rubber than oxygen, which means that your tire pressures will remain more stable over the long term. That means more consistent inflation pressures during a use as the tires heat up.
Aircraft fuel systems
In some aircraft fuel systems nitrogen is used to reduce fire hazard.
Chemical analysis and chemical industry
Nitrogen is commonly used during sample preparation in chemical analysis. It is used to concentrate and reduce the volume of liquid samples. Nitrogen is also important to the chemical industry. It is used in production of fertilisers, nitric acid, nylon, dyes and explosives.
Pressurised beer kegs
Nitrogen can be used as a replacement, or in combination with, carbon dioxide to pressurise kegs of some beers, particularly stouts and British ales, due to the smaller bubbles it produces, which makes the dispensed beer smoother and headier. Nitrogen-charged beers can be packaged in cans and bottles.
Nitrogen use by purity
PSA can produce nitrogen at various range of purities. The lower the purity, the lower is the cost of nitrogen production. For example, the quality of vegetable oil can be maintained by blanketing with 99,5% nitrogen purity. Normal nitrogen purity for food processing is in the range from 99% to 99,5%. Lower purity nitrogen in the range from 96% to 99% is often used in fire and explosion prevention. High purity with nitrogen content from 99,9 % to 99,999 % is typically used for laser cutting, electronics soldering and pharmaceutical applications.
ADVANTAGES:
Use of the nitrogen | Purity of the N2 |
Food processing: - Wine blanketing | 99,0 % to 99,9 % |
Fire prevention | 95 % |
Explosion prevention | 95% to 98 % |
Chemical blanketing | 95 % to 99,9 % |
Pressure testing | 95 % |
Injection moulding | 99 % to 99,5 % |
Electronic soldering | 99,95 % to 99,995 % |
Laser cutting | 99,95 % to 99,995 % |
Pharmaceutical | 99,95 to 99,999 % |
Most popular OMEGA AIR solution for nitrogen production:
