Process and unit for producing oxygen by adsorption with a short cycle

US6171371A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• L'Air Liquide, Societe Anonyme Pour l'Etude et l'Exploitation des Procedes Georges Claude · FR

Inventors

• Nathalie Derive · Paris, FR
• Anne Dubois · Le Chesnay, FR
• Christian Monereau · Paris, FR

Key dates

• Filing date: Apr 7, 1999
• Grant date: Jan 9, 2001
• Expiry date: Apr 7, 2019

Classification

• Technology area (CPC Y): Emerging Cross-Sectional Technologies
• CPC primary: Y02P30/00
• WIPO field: Chemical engineering
• WIPO sector: Chemistry

Abstract

The cycle employed is of the transatmospheric type with the use of a production buffer tank (C1), and with a purge/elution phase close to the low pressure in which gas output by another adsorber in the first cocurrent decompression phase is introduced in countercurrent into the adsorber (A, B) and, simultaneously, the countercurrent pumping is continued. During the production step, the oxygen produced is also sent into an auxiliary tank (C2), and the gas contained in this auxiliary tank is, with regard to the adsorber, used solely during a fraction of the pressurization phase of the adsorber.