Chemicals

Doing more with less fuel

Looking for a way to reduce emissions and save fuel in your chemical manufacturing processes? Just add a little oxygen.

When properly introduced into the combustion process, oxygen can increase the productivity of chemical process heaters and save fuel without increasing NOx emissions. At Linde, we have pioneered the use of oxygen in many industrial combustion applications that can help you meet your financial and environmental goals. And because every customer has unique needs and requirements, our engineers will work with you to tailor our oxygen combustion technology to match your chemical manufacturing goals.

We have successfully applied oxygen-enhanced combustion to a variety of process heaters ranging from steam-methane reformers to petroleum liquids heaters. Integration of oxygen-enhanced combustion with the air-fuel heating process can favorably impact heat release patterns to yield more uniform temperature distribution, longer run lengths, and more salable chemicals. Oxygen can also help overcome restrictions on heater productivity caused by exhaust flow rate and fuel system capacity limitations. If your process heaters are a manufacturing bottleneck, Linde may have the economical solution you're looking for. We have developed an oxygen-enhanced combustion technology that can increase the amount of hydrogen or carbon monoxide produced from a steam methane reformer. This low-cost technology can result in chemical production increases of more than 20% depending on your operating parameters.

We have also developed a number of oxygen-based technologies that can help Spent Acid Recovery (SAR) plants increase the amount of spent sulfuric acid they can process. Increases of more than 30% have been achieved at SAR plants depending on factors such as the design of downstream equipment, spent acid and fuel composition. Improvements in furnace performance, reduction of fuel consumption on a unit basis, and a decrease in NOx formation can also be achieved. Available technologies include combustion air enrichment, oxygen burners, oxygen lances, and spent acid atomization.