In an air separation process at a major manufacturer of industrial gases, the company was reducing the pressure in a cooling water stream with a pressure let-down valve. This provided an opportunity to install a process pump from ITT Goulds Pumps unit, run it backwards as a turbine, and recover some of the available energy.

      Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. is the world’s only combined gases and chemicals company. In its Baytown, Texas facility, Air Products operates a world-scale air separation plant to supply customers with oxygen requirements as well as other gaseous and liquid products to serve local markets including nitrogen and argon. The Baytown facility produces 2,600 tons of oxygen per day.

      As part of the gas production process, the Baytown facility uses an air separation unit which takes atmospheric air and splits it into its component parts; nitrogen, oxygen and argon. Each of those products is sold to customers either through pipeline or tanker truck.

      The air separation process is a cryogenic distillation process. Compressed air is liquefied and put through a distillation process where the different weights of the oxygen, nitrogen and argon molecules allow the raw air feedstock to be split into its component parts...

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