Can the air-cooling tower of the air separation unit be removed?
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Dear colleagues: It features a 5,000-cubic-meter air intake, twin high towers; the nitrogen output from the towers is 1,200 cubic meters, while the oxygen output is 800 cubic meters. This air separation unit was designed and manufactured by Kaifeng Air Separation Plant in the 1990s. The air from the centrifuge enters the air-cooling tower, then the refrigeration unit, followed by the water separator, and finally the molecular sieve for purification. Over the past few years, equipment has been upgraded; the centrifuges now use imported Atlas equipment, and the temperature at the air outlet is below 40 degrees. In this process, can the air-cooling tower be eliminated?
It can be canceled; it’s advisable to install a chiller before the molecular sieve is fed with air, in order to prevent the air temperature at the inlet of the molecular sieve from becoming too high during summer. However, another issue is that the excess nitrogen isn’t utilized ~~
The air-cooled tower also has a washing function; does this mean that the filter elements need to be adjusted as well? The suction resistance of the centrifuge will also change
The design is generally based on the actual conditions on site; I have not seen such a approach used yet. Theoretical cancellation is possible, but it comes at the cost of high energy consumption.
For small air separation units or those that produce pure nitrogen, the basic design involves eliminating pre-cooling~~and replacing it with a chiller~~