Installation of air separation unit

The air contains 0.932% of argon. When the upper tower wants to produce 99.6% of oxygen, it must contain 1.05% of argon in the nitrogen exhaust. From the perspective of the separation process, the stripping section (below the liquid-air inlet) in the upper column is basically an oxygen-argon separation, and the rectification section (above the liquid-air inlet) is basically a nitrogen-oxygen (argon) separation. . The boiling points of argon and oxygen are relatively close (the boiling point of o...

The expansion air volume entering the upper tower increases, and the reflux ratio of the distillation section decreases correspondingly. In order to achieve the required purity of nitrogen products, more tower plates need to be set. When the reflux ratio is reduced to countless Tower plates needed to be set to make the purity of nitrogen reach the required value, then the reflux ratio is called the minimum reflux ratio. The expansion air volume entering the upper tower is first limited by the minimum reflux ratio. The closer the reflux ratio is to the minimum reflux ratio, the faster the number of tower plates needed to ensure the product purity increases, which will lead to the increase of investment, the increase of tower plate resistance, the increase of Operation pressure and the increase of energy consumption. Therefore, the reflux ratio after the inflated air enters the tower should be larger than the minimum reflux ratio. When the purity of nitrogen is required to be low, the...