Oxygenation and Oxygen Enrichment: Reliable Gas Supplies

Intensify your Industrial Processes with the Power of Our Oxygen Enrichment and Oxygenation Process Technologies

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Applications of Oxygen and Potential for Productivity and Environmental Gains

Separated from atmospheric air, oxygen (O2) is an extremely versatile gas with a very broad application spectrum. It is used, for instance, to supplement or replace air supplied by burners in combustion furnaces across many different industries. The benefits of an oxygen-enriched environment include higher temperatures, enhanced combustion efficiency and the reduction or elimination of harmful emissions. Typical applications that benefit from adding oxygen are found in the steel, non-ferrous, glass and concrete industries.

Many oxidation reactions in the petrochemical and chemical industries use pure oxygen rather than air. The advantages of these oxygen enrichment use cases include higher reaction rates, easier product separation, higher yields or smaller equipment footprints.

Oxygen-enriched air also offers environmental gains in the handling of industrial by-products and wastewater. It can, for example, help to reduce flue gas volumes, lower carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, combust waste gas, incinerate wastewater sludge, accelerate the decomposition of sewage and purify wastewater streams. Looking beyond these hard-to-abate sectors, other common applications of oxygen include aquaculture, where oxygen-boosted water contributes to fish welfare.

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Broad Offering Spanning Bulk and On-site Oxygen Supplies, Measurement and Control Technology, and State-of-the-art Injectors

Complementing our extensive industrial oxygen generation and supply network spanning both on-site and bulk oxygen deliveries, we also offer process control, analysis and injection technologies tailored to individual supply, purity and volume needs. Highlights include our OXYMIX® Flowtrain measurement and control system for safe oxygen metering, our dedicated OXYMIX® oxygen injector, our REBOX® family of reheating solutions, and our SOLVOX® portfolio of energy-efficient oxygenation solutions.

Read on for a closer look at just some of these oxygenation and oxygen enrichment (O2e) applications. 

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Intensification of Air Oxidation Reactions in Chemicals, Refining and Petrochemicals

Growing climate change pressures are highlighting the need to decarbonize many sectors of industry, particularly those that are energy-intensive or heavily reliant on fossil fuels. This places the spotlight on hard-to-abate sectors such as oil and gas, petrochemicals, refining and chemicals. Many steps in the value chains of these industries rely on energy-intensive oxidation reactions. Typical oxidation processes include refining crude oil, heating feedstocks, conditioning catalysts and treating waste streams.

These oxidation processes in refining and petrochemistry often rely on the oxygen in ambient air. However, this is not particularly efficient. The difference between oxygen and air is that ambient air contains 78.8 percent nitrogen. This inert nitrogen "ballast" has to be routed through the various process steps, thus increasing the compressing, heating, cooling and blowing effort.

Benefits of O2e in Chemicals, Refining and Petrochemicals

Replacing or enriching this air with oxygen increases the partial pressure of oxygen and reduces the process gas flow. Oxygen enrichment technology is widely established and successfully deployed to debottleneck Claus units in petrochemical or natural gas plants through enhanced sulfur recovery; improve the performance of fluid catalytic crackers (FCC) in refineries; and increase spent acid regeneration (SAR) throughput in Claus plants without increasing NOx emissions. Supporting the gasification of carbon-containing solids, O2e is further applied to enhance syngas production and reforming. By enabling capacity and energy efficiency gains, oxygen enrichment applications such as these help operators of petrochemical and chemical plants and refineries to safely decarbonize their operations while boosting throughput. 

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Enhance Productivity and Fish Health with Aquaculture Oxygenation Solutions

A stable, carefully measured supply of oxygen is essential for fish welfare, growth and survival in aquaculture farms. The amount of oxygen required for optimal fish growth is dependent on the fish species, fish size and density, feed, activity levels and water temperature. Any reductions in or interruptions to oxygen supply can have detrimental consequences on fish welfare and profitability.

We offer an extensive portfolio of SOLVOX® solutions plus complementary services to give operators greater control over dissolved oxygen for fish. Our end-to-end oxygenation process systems are tailored to the requirements of different fish species and aquaculture concepts including tanks, cages, recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) and flow-through systems, also contributing to fish wellbeing through optimized tank hydraulics.

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Oxygen-enriched Combustion in Metal Production for Productivity and Environmental Gains

Under growing pressure to increase energy efficiency and productivity, steelmakers are keen to explore all opportunities for improvement. Oxygen enrichment has the potential to optimize the reheating step across all kinds of furnaces - from large pushers and walking beams through rotary hearths to various batch furnaces. We offer a broad portfolio of oxygen-enabled process technologies for the metals industry.

Benefits of O2e in Metals

Designed to elevate efficiency and flexibility in steel reheating furnaces, our REBOX® portfolio includes REBOX® flameless oxyfuel solutions, and on-demand REBOX® High Level Lancing (HLL) technology using pure oxygen. Our COJET® gas injection system is designed for electric arc furnaces (EAFs), delivering a laser-like coherent jet of oxygen at supersonic speeds into the molten bath. And our OXYGON® ladle preheating systems use highly efficient flameless oxyfuel combustion to save energy.

In aluminum melting and casting too, oxygen enrichment has the ability to intensify processes, reduce energy consumption and lower emissions through low-temperature oxyfuel combustion technology and ladle preheating, with the option of switching between oxygen and oxygen-enriched gases during the melting process and air during the holding phase.

In copper production, oxygen enrichment delivers superior combustion efficiency. Our specialized solutions, including our COJET® technology, are designed for the efficient injection of fuel, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen or a mix of these gases for improved process control. Moving on to mining, oxygen and other gas-based solutions support all pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical process steps - from ore milling to metals. Oxygen can be injected into the process flow at various steps to stabilize combustion while increasing efficiency.

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More Information on Oxygenation and Oxygen Enrichment

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