Nitrogen in the oil and gas industry

Nitrogen is used in a wide range of areas within the oil and gas industry to prevent fire and explosion hazards - both onshore and offshore.

For example, nitrogen is used for headspace flushing of oil tanks in refineries or oil tankers. If oil is removed from the storage tanks, the oil level in the tank drops. At the same time, the headspace in the oil tank needs to be inerted with N2. As an inert gas, nitrogen is highly inert and displaces any oxygen present. This avoids chemical reactions that can result in fires. When oil is stored in tanks, slag settles on the bottom of the tanks over time. The tank therefore loses its effectiveness. Oil tanks are cleaned regularly for this reason. To this end, the tanks are flushed and blown out with nitrogen to avoid inflammatory reactions between oil residues and cleaning agents.

Gas and oil refineries and tankers have an extensive pipeline network. The unused pipelines are continuously inerted with nitrogen and tested at different pressures. In this way, damage and production losses can be prevented in advance.

With our nitrogen generators, we supply high quality solutions for the stationary and mobile production of nitrogen for different applications, including for low volume requirements.