How does the change of environmental conditions affect the performance of the air separation plant?

Answer: environmental conditions include atmospheric pressure, ambient temperature, atmospheric humidity and the content of CO2 and other impurities in the air. These conditions change with the regional and climate conditions, and the same air separation unit will also show different performance.
1) influence of atmospheric pressure. Atmospheric pressure fluctuates around 0.1MPa. The reduction of atmospheric pressure will increase the compression ratio of the air compressor. The reduction of atmospheric pressure by 0.01MPa will increase the compression ratio of the air compressor by 6% ~ 8%, increase the energy consumption of compression. In addition, due to the increase of mass specific volume (the decrease of density), the air displacement of air compressor decreases, and the corresponding oxygen output will also decrease, and the unit power consumption of oxygen generation will increase.
2) influence of environmental temperature. The increase of ambient temperature will reduce the air displacement of the air compressor and increase the shaft power. When the ambient temperature rises 3℃, the shaft power will increase by 1%. In addition, the increase of ambient temperature will also make the exhaust temperature of air compressor rise and the cold loss increase, which requires more refrigerating capacity to balance the cold loss, which will eventually lead to the increase of energy consumption.
3) the influence of air humidity. As the air humidity increases, part of the compressor power is consumed on the compressed water vapor, causing the shaft power of the air compressor to increase.
4) the influence of impurities in the air. The increase of impurity content in the air increases the purification load of the molecular sieve adsorber.