Recovery of krypton and xenon from liquid oxygen

A process for the recovery of xenon and/or krypton from a liquid oxygen stream comprising oxygen and xenon and/or krypton, said process comprising:

• providing a rare gas recovery system comprising a rare gas recovery column having a top, a bottom, at least one distillation zone, and a reboiling zone comprising a reboiler;
• providing a liquid oxygen feed comprising oxygen and xenon and/or krypton;
• providing a first portion of the liquid oxygen feed to the top of rare gas recovery column to form a reflux liquid;
• providing a high-pressure liquid oxygen stream;
• vaporizing a reboiler liquid in the reboiling zone to produce a mixture of a rising vapor and a xenon and/or krypton-enriched liquid stream;
• contacting the rising vapor with the reflux liquid in the at least one distillation zone to effect stripping xenon and/or krypton from the rising vapor to the reflux liquid to produce the reboiler liquid;
• removing the rising vapor from the top of the rare gas recovery column forming a xenon and/or krypton-lean gaseous oxygen stream;
• removing the xenon and/or krypton-enriched liquid stream from the bottom of the rare gas recovery column;
• passing the xenon and/or krypton-lean gaseous oxygen stream directly through a cold compressor forming a cold compressed oxygen stream;
• passing the cold compressed oxygen stream through the reboiler producing condensed liquid oxygen by indirect heat exchange with the reboiler liquid in the reboiling zone;
• removing the condensed liquid oxygen from the rare gas recovery system as xenon and/or krypton-lean liquid oxygen;
• reducing the pressure of the high-pressure liquid oxygen stream in a valve, to a pressure greater than the operating pressure of the rare gas recovery column, forming a compressed liquid oxygen stream;
• warming the compressed liquid oxygen stream by indirect heat exchange in a desubcooler to form the liquid oxygen feed;
• passing the condensed liquid oxygen to the desubcooler and cooling, by indirect heat exchange with the compressed liquid oxygen stream, to produce a subcooled xenon and/or krypton-lean liquid oxygen;
• wherein the rare gas recovery column is operated at an operating pressure of between 5 to 25 bara.