Thoughts on Nitrogen Generating Systems in Heat Treat Applications
Yesterday “The Monty Heat Treat News” had an article entitled “Paul Cairney & Nitrogen Generation“. The article started off by mentioning Mr. Paul Cairney, an individual very well known in the field of on-site nitrogen generation and moved on to some thoughts from “The Monty” about nitrogen generation in the heat treatment industry. The article prompted a number of comments including this one from a user of such a system, Mr. Chris Davidson of controls company SSi of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Chris pointed out the pluses and minisus of such systems in a very unbiased manner.
“Our testing as shown that you get MUCH higher purity than advertised. From my understanding, we are able to choose which “filter” we pass the air through to create the nitrogen, each with a rated purity level. What we’ve found is that we easily achieve greater than advertised/labeled purity.
One note about nitrogen generation- Not good for vacuum quench application. Not because of the purity, but because of needing such a HIGH volume of nitrogen in a very short period- currently, as I am aware, no nitrogen generator can do that. To me, I don’t understand why you have a nitrogen generator that is filling the bulk tanks at each vacuum furnace, but I am not an expert on this.
Either way, I’m told nitrogen generators do not work for instantaneous high-volume flow. The other issue is if you lose power, you will only have the nitrogen available that has already been created. Bulk storage offers the advantage that you have a large quantity, typically way more than enough, to safely purge out all of your equipment.
Side note- works great in continuous flow applications: Nitriding/FNC, continuous furnaces, nitrogen tempers, etc… Basically if there is a continuous flow (does not have to be steady as they are a demand based system), they are great and should be used/installed!
I think there is a lot more growth for nitrogen generators in our industry, but it’s going to be application specific. Of course, for a continuous operation, there is certainly going to be a payback period (think autogen and the natural gas/electrical energy savings), but I have zero knowledge of the bulk tank storage contracts and refill fees to even begin to calculate this- I’d leave that to the experts.”
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