New On-Site Nitrogen and Oxygen Generators

Atlas Copco Compressors (UK) have recently launched three new of nitrogen and oxygen generators for on-site gas generation. The generators are called NGM, NGP and OGP generators and are manufactured to meet the highest purity standards. They are also designed to run economically across small and large applications. The new ranges will enable companies to use their previous compressed air installation to generate their own nitrogen and oxygen and therefore realise significant economies of scale as well as operational cost savings.

Gas generation is made more sustainable and cost-efficient when made on-site rather than having gas delivered in cylinders. On-site generation eliminates operational and administrative costs of ordering, transporting, storing and delivering the bottles or bulk liquid in cryogenic tanks. On-site generation also means there is an independent supply of nitrogen and oxygen and that a company's gas requirements are continuously met at low costs. Koen Lauwers, Vice-President Marketing of Atlas Copco’s Industrial Air Division comments: “With these new ranges of gas generators, our customers can dramatically increase their productivity. We help them to discover untapped saving potentials through economies of scale: combining their compressed air systems with the production of nitrogen and/or oxygen, serving their specific applications. .”

NGM is Atlas Copco's new membrane nitrogen generator. This is ideal for applications in fire prevention, blanketing, tyre inflation and applications in the offshore and marine industries due to its high efficiency and reliability. The NGM uses membrane air separation to produce nitrogen. The way this works is it will use a polymer fibres that will act like a membrane allowing nitrogen to pass but other gases to permeate. The purity can be adjusted between 95 and 99.5 % and flows up to 500 m³/h.

For applications that require high purities of nitrogen (up to 99.999%), the new NGP, a nitrogen generator using PSA technology, is the recommended solution. Using Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) technology, carbon molecular sieve adsorb oxygen molecules from compressed air. This nitrogen generator has two connected towers that work together to produce an almost continuous flow of nitrogen gas resulting in nitrogen purity levels from 95 to 99,999 % for flows up to 1100 Nm³/h. The NGP is therefore particularly suitable for applications such as food preservation, plastic moulding, machining, purging, laboratory analysers, and applications in the electronics and food and drink industries.

Oxygen is vital to processes in the medical world, in waste water treatment, fish farming and ozone production. Atlas Copco’s new OGP oxygen generator also makes use of PSA technology with zeolite pellets that act as the adsorbent. The output is oxygen with an adjustable purity between 90% and 95%, at flows up to 200 Nm³/h.

All of the new on-site gas generators can be directly combined with an existing compressed air installation and include flows and purities to meet the needs of the majority of industrial applications.