Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Bruce K. Dawson
Air Products and Chemicals Inc.
7201 Hamilton Boulevard
Allentown, PA 18195-1501
Abstract
A cryogenic air separation unit consumption required to produce a
requires refrigeration to compensate given set of products. The efficiency of
for heat ingress to the cold equipment the turbo expander directly affects the
as well as for the difference in heat flow required to produce the required
content among the feed air, the refrigeration.
effluent gas, and the liquid products.
A turbo expander is used to expand By improving the efficiency of the
air or nitrogen from a higher expander, an operating plant can
pressure to a lower pressure to achieve either a reduction in total
produce refrigeration for the process. energy cost to produce the same
Various expander configurations are amount of product or increase the
possible. The best choice depends amount of product produced for the
on the quantity and pressure of the same energy cost. A case study was
high-pressure gaseous products and undertaken to quantify the benefits
whether or not liquid co-production of improving expander efficiency for
is required. In general, higher three different air separation cycles.
expander flow increases the energy
Case 1: which made the separation more
difficult. A higher expander flow
Pumped liquid oxygen cycle negatively affected the plant oxygen
– expand air to low pressure recovery (See Figure 2 below).
column
If co-product nitrogen was produced
For a typical air separation unit (ASU)
directly from the high pressure
designed to produce mainly gaseous
column, the boil up and reflux
products at low to moderate pressure,
available was similarly reduced, which
a portion of the feed air was
made minimizing the expander flow
expanded into the low pressure
even more important to achieving the
column. Figure 1 below shows the
best plant efficiency.
process flow diagram (PFD) for such
an ASU. The PFD shows an ASU that
produces oxygen using the pumped
Figure 1: Process Flow Diagram for Case 1
liquid oxygen (LOX) or internal
compression cycle, but the discussion
applies equally to ASUs that produce
oxygen as a gas directly from the low
pressure column. The expander flow
bypassed the high pressure column
and reduced both the boil up and
reflux to the low pressure column,
20
% of total air
19
18
10 20
Expander Flow + HP GAN Flow (% of total air flow)
85
was used for the study.
83
In evaluating the capital expenditure 81
necessary to achieve an expected
79
power savings, both the cost of
power and the expected life of the 77
equipment should be considered. 75
Using $0.12/KWH and a 3 year straight 0 50 100 150 200
payback can justify an investment of Power Savings (KW)
about $3000 per KW saved.
88
86
84
82
80
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700
Power Savings (KW)
Case 3: 60,000 NM3/hr plant studied, adding
a DFE saves an additional 900 KW. A
Expand air to high pressure DFE may clearly be a good investment
column and install dense fluid for a plant with a large high pressure
expander BAC.
The BAC power becomes a significant
As an alternative to a power recovery
fraction of the total plant energy
DFE, a dissipative DFE can be utilized.
consumption for large plants
Rather than recovering power via a
producing high pressure oxygen
generator, a dissipative DFE shears
and/or a large quantity of liquid
oil to dissipate the power as heat.
oxygen. Plants designed to produce
The dissipative DFE can provide the
a large quantity of liquid are even
same BAC power savings as a power
more energy intensive. (Improving
recovery DFE, but does not provide the
the expander efficiency from 84%
additional benefit of power recovery.
to 90% for a typical dual expander
The capital cost of a dissipative DFE
nitrogen recycle can save
is often lower than a power recovery
approximately 5% of the plant’s
DFE, making it a potentially attractive
total power usage.) If the flow of
choice for lower power applications.
condensed air let down from BAC
discharge pressure is large, it may be
economical to replace the let down Figure 6: Process Flow Diagram for Case 3
valve with a dense fluid expander
(DFE). This device is similar to a pump
running backwards producing electric
power. Because less refrigeration
is needed to cool the high pressure
air going to the DFE, the BAC power
saving is approximately 4 times the
power recovered by the DFE. For the
tell me more
airproducts.com/services/plant-services