Oxygen removal
AssigneeJohnson Matthey PLC
InventorsPeter John Herbert Carnell, Martin Fowles, Raymond Anthony Hadden, Suzanne Rose Ellis
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A process for reducing free oxygen in a gaseous nitrogen stream includes the steps of (i) reforming a hydrocarbon to generate a gas mixture containing hydrogen and carbon oxides, (ii) mixing the gas mixture with a nitrogen stream containing free oxygen, and (iii) passing the resulting nitrogen gas mixture over a conversion catalyst that converts at least a portion of the free oxygen present in the nitrogen to steam wherein the hydrocarbon reforming step includes oxidation of a hydrocarbon using an oxygen-containing gas.
Claims14
A system for reducing the free oxygen content of a nitrogen stream, the system comprising:
- a reformer vessel having a hydrocarbon inlet and configured to generate a hydrogens containing gas;
- a conversion vessel operatively connected to the reformer vessel, the conversion vessel having at least one gas inlet, a product gas outlet, and a conversion catalyst disposed within the conversion vessel, the at least one gas inlet configured to receive at least one of the hydrogen-containing gas and free-oxygen containing gaseous nitrogen, the conversion vessel configured to allow contact between the hydrogen-containing gas and the conversion catalyst and generate oxygen-depleted nitrogen;
- a source of water containing dissolved oxygen;
- and
- a contacting unit operatively connected to the conversion vessel and the source of water containing dissolved oxygen, the contacting unit configured to allow contact between the water containing dissolved oxygen and the oxygen-depleted nitrogen to generate a free oxygen-containing stream and a de-oxygenated water stream.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.