Highly pure nitrogen gas producing apparatus
AssigneeDaidousanso Co., Ltd.
InventorAkira Yoshino
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AssigneeDaidousanso Co., Ltd.
InventorAkira Yoshino
Estimating the term…
A producing apparatus of highly pure nitrogen gas which is used in electronic industry for manufacturing silicon semi-conductors. Conventional nitrogen gas producing apparatus of low temperature separation method and of PSA method are subjected to troubles frequently, the cost of the obtained product nitrogen gas is high, yet the purity is not very high. By the apparatus of this invention, the liquefied nitrogen storage means (23) is connected to rectifying column (15) through the inlet channel (24), the ultra low temperature compressed air supplied into the rectifying column (15) through the air compression means (9), removing means (12) and heat exchangers (13) (14) is cooled further by the evaporating heat of the liquefied nitrogen, the nitrogen is taken out in gas form by utilizing the difference in boiling point, and oxygen is left as liquid. The obtained nitrogen gas is combined with the gassified liquid nitrogen from the liquefied nitrogen storage means (23) and made into product nitrogen gas. Highly pure nitrogen gas can be produced at a low cost and with almost no trouble of the apparatus.
In an apparatus comprising means designed for producing highly pure nitrogen gas from the rectification of air, for precluding the need for a subsequent high-temperature catalytic step and for precluding the need of purging large quantities of cooling nitrogen, the combination which comprises means effective to compress the air taken from the outside, a means to remove the carbon dioxide gas and water in the compressed air by the said air compression means, a means to store liquefied nitrogen supplied from the outside, a heat exchanger connected to cool down the compressed air passed through said removing means to ultra low temperature, a rectifying column connected to turn a part of the compressed air cooled by the heat exchanger to ultra low temperature into liquid and to keep only nitrogen in gas form, said rectifying column having evaporating means for converting said liquid nitrogen to gaseous nitrogen, a lead channel connected lead consistently the liquefied nitrogen in said liquefied nitrogen storage means into said evaporating means as a source of cooling for compressed air liquefication in place of cold generated from a gas expander, a means to control the feed rate of said liquefied nitrogen in order to maintain constant rectifying conditions in said rectifying column which is provided to said lead channel, and an outlet channel connected to combine and remove both of the gasified said liquid nitrogen after use as the cooling source and also the gasified nitrogen from the outside source, pass them through said heat exchanger and heat them by exchanging heat with said compressed air, as the product nitrogen gas.
In an apparatus comprising means designed for performing a low cost method of producing high purity nitrogen gas of a quality sufficient for the electronics industry, for precluding the need for a subsequent high-temperature catalystic step and for precluding the need of purging large quantities of cooling nitrogen, the combination which comprises:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.