One of the most important activities of chemical industry is the
creation and further processing of products. In prominent position
among these is the extraction of petroleum.
It is common knowledge that the crude oil is not only extracted
on shore, but also off shore inside the existing extraction areas.
On board of anchored petroleum off shore vessels or platforms,
drilling for petroleum or natural gas is effected in several hundred
meters deepness. After extraction, tankships or pipelines carry these
higly combustible goods, which are always under inerting condition
by use of nitrogen during transportation, to various locations of the
globe for further processing.

In order to deliver oil or natural gas from the deepness to earth’s
surface, either of both need partly to be compressed and are then
pumped under higher pressure from sea bottom to earth’s surface.

The medium is compressed and brought to higher pressure by use
of a turbo-compressor whose drive shaft resp. drive train is equipped
with slide ring seals. These slide ring seals are provided with nitrogen
in order to prevent oxygen from penetrating into the inner parts of the compressor. Another application of the nitrogen is the inerting of the
plant to inhibit explosions.

The inclement everyday’s practice on board of petroleum off shore
vessels or platforms sets very high exigencies to the engaged machinery
and materials, as work in the off shore area is effected under highest requirements and strong security measures.

The specific requirements in regard to petroleum or gas drilling
platforms imply for engineering, manufacture and certification of the
nitrogen plants that all components, starting from the casing of the
plant, are designed in stainless steel with additional protective varnishing.
Also the entire electrical drive units and functional elements are
EEX-equipped and protected against salt water ingress with minimum
protection class IP 65.

The challenging exigencies of our customers are accomplished
on the highest level. We provide at Herrsching plant engineering and construction for nitrogen and oxygen installations since several decades.
Inmatec manufactures standard products for the chemical industry,
as well as special installations in full compliance to our client’s needs.

Nitrogen is required by on-site generation in all parts of the globe,
as it eliminates the long and infinitely complex efforts related to its
central provisioning. Our plants only require mains supply for being
operative. The nitrogen generators supply nitrogen only on request,
precisely at the time when there is a demand for it. Otherwise the
plant is operative, but just in stand-by mode.

The compressed air required to generate nitrogen is produced by
anindustrial srew type compressor, which intakes the air to densify
it to 10 bar pressure. Subsequently the compressed air is cleansed
by several filtering systems. When the compressed air is sufficiently
free from condensate, oil and other impurities, it is fed into the
patented membrane system inside which oxygen is separated from
nitrogen.

The functioning principle of the nitrogen generator is based upon the
latest state-of-the-art membrane technology. The further developed
and patented gas fractionation membrane separates the compressed
air into two gas flows, one nitrogen flow and one air flow of enriched
oxygen. The chemical composition of the nitrogen membrane is unique.
It is indeed a combination of quality and performance ensuring a
very long service life.

After adjustment of the required nitrogen purity of 95 % up to
99,9 vol. %, an analyzer unit monitors continuously the produced
nitrogen flow for its residual oxygen content. More control functions
allow for monitoring of volume flow, temperature and pressure.
In case of power failure the plant is automatically switched to a
back-up system, thus ensuring continued availability of the nitrogen.
In this situation an alarm message is triggered that allows to check
the origin of power failure and to resume the functional capability
as fast as possible.

The systems are very often designed as redundant plant so that
in case of failure of one component part, the system is automatically
switched to the second line.

Purity grades of up to 99,999 % are generated by our IMT-PSA
on-site generators, under use of the “Pressure Swing Adsorption” process.
This new generation of our CMS air fractionation plants provides nitrogen
quality of up to 10 ppm.

The plants are manufactured by Inmatec for capacity range from
10 to 5.000 Nm³/h, based upon the corresponding engineering,
they are designed for various areas of process and application.