Applications of Nitrogen Generators

  • Food and beverage industries: The moment food or beverages are produced, or fruits and vegetables harvested, an aging process kicks in until the complete decay of the products. This is caused by chemical reactions with oxygen, bacteria and other organisms. Generators are used to flood the products with N2that displaces the oxygen and prolongs the product lifetime significantly because these organisms cannot develop. Furthermore, chemical degradation of food caused by oxidation can be eliminated or stopped.
  • Aircraft & Motor Vehicle tires: Although air  is 78% nitrogen, most aircraft tires are filled with pure nitrogen. There are many tire and automotive shops with nitrogen generators to fill tires. The advantage of using nitrogen is that the tank is dry. Often a compressed air tank will have water in it that comes from atmospheric water vapor condensing in the tank after leaving the air compressor. Nitrogen maintains a more stable pressure when heated and cooled as a result of being dry and doesn’t permeate the tire as easily due to being a slightly larger molecule  (155 pm) than O2 (152 pm).
  • Chemical and petrochemical industries: The primary and very important application of nitrogen in chemical and petrochemical industries is the provision of inert environment aimed at ensuring general industrial safety during cleaning and protection of process vessels. In addition, nitrogen is used for pipelines pressure testing, chemical agents transportation, and regeneration of used catalysts in technological processes.
  • Fire Protection: The fire protection industry uses nitrogen gas for two different applications – fire suppression and corrosion  prevention. Nitrogen generators are used in hypoxic air fire prevention systems to produce air with a low oxygen content which will suppress a fire. To prevent corrosion, nitrogen generators are used in place of or in conjunction with a compressed air system to provide supervisory nitrogen gas in place of air for dry pipe and pre-action fire sprinkler systems.
  • Glass industry: In glass production, nitrogen proves efficient as a cooling agent for electric arc furnace electrodes as well as to displace oxygen during process procedures.
  • Metallurgy : The metal industry generally utilizes nitrogen as a means of protecting ferrous and non-ferrous  metals during annealing. Also, nitrogen is helpful in such standard industry processes as neutral tempering, cementing, hard brazing, stress relieving, cyanide hardening, metal-powder sintering and extrusion die cooling.
  • Paint-and-varnish industry: Paint and varnish production uses nitrogen for the creation of an inert environment in process vessels to ensure safety, as well as for oxygen displacement during packing in order to prevent polymerization of drying oils.
  • Petroleum Industry: In the petroleum industry, nitrogen is an indispensable component in a number of processes. Most commonly, nitrogen is used to create an inert environment for preventing explosions and for fire safety  and to support transportation and transfer of hydrocarbons. Additionally, nitrogen is used for pipeline testing and purging, cleaning technological vessels and cleaning liquefied gas carriers and hydrocarbon storage facilities.
  • Pharmaceutical Industry: In the pharmaceutical industry, nitrogen finds application in pharmaceuticals packaging, and ensuring against explosion and fire safety  in activities where fine dispersed substances are used.

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