Oxygen is the life saving gas with atomic number 8. It is represented by the symbol O. It is a highly reactive nonmetallic period 2 element that easily forms compounds (notably oxides) with almost all other elements. The third most abundant element in the earth by mass is oxygen after hydrogen and helium. It is also the most abundant element by mass in the earth's crust too. In fact, oxygen constitutes 88.8% of the mass of water and 20.9% of the volume of air. There are few types of oxygen plants described here in:

Membrane Oxygen Plants
The membrane technology is also used for air-to-oxygen production. Actually, membrane oxygen plants allow oxygen generation with the purity of up to 50%. This make membrane oxygen plants highly effective from the economic point of view. In fact, customer receives oxygenated air with the required oxygen concentration (30% to 50%), without having to pay for unnecessary high purity.

Actually, the operating principle of membrane oxygen plants is similar to the nitrogen membrane systems mechanism based on different oxygen and nitrogen rates of permeability through membrane material. The only difference is that unlike nitrogen, oxygen serves as the target product delivered even under small excess pressure.

50% oxygen generated by air separation membrane plants find applications in various industries to cover varied sectors.

Application

• Metallurgy enterprises for metal cutting and welding
• Organizations dealing in Fish, Shrimp farming
• Crab and Mussel farming.
• Wastewater treatment

Adsorption Oxygen Plants
There is also an advanced adsorption oxygen plants based on the Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) technology and rated to produce oxygen with the purity of up to 95%.

Nowadays, most air separation plants designed on the basis of the PSA technology produce gaseous oxygen with the purity not more than 95%. In fact, the operating principle of oxygen plants is dependent on the adsorbing properties of materials used for selective adsorption of air-contained nitrogen and impurity gases molecules. This is achieved while passing oxygen molecules.

The adoption of air separation adsorption oxygen plants helps to produce oxygen at minimum cost. Apart from economic benefits, the systems undoubted advantage lies in the simplicity of operation and maintenance.

Application

• Oxygen generation for safe automatic metal cutting
• Used in silicate
• Pulp-and-paper industry
• Food & pharmaceutical industries

Cryogenic Oxygen Plants
Generally, cryogenic oxygen plants offer the production of 99.9% gaseous and liquid oxygen from atmospheric air.

Where the customer requires high purity oxygen of 99% to 99.9%, cryogenic technology is considerd to be the only separation technology allowing to produce oxygen of this premium purity. In fact, the admissible purity of oxygen produced by membrane and adsorption based plants is limited by 50% and 95% respectively.

Thus indeed, cryogenic technology is the optimum solution by large oxygen consumption requirements. Basically, at the consumption rate exceeding 1000 nm/hr cryogenic plants appear most suitable and are always preferred due to their higher cost-effectiveness.

Another benefit of cryogenic oxygen plants is their capability to produce oxygen in two aggregative states: gaseous and liquid whereas, the membrane and adsorption technologies can only produce gaseous oxygen.

Application

• Ozone plants feeding
• Water plant treatment
• Medicine
• Fish farming