Air Products to Supply Air Separation Unit to NIGC Complex in Al Jubail

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Air Products and Chemicals Incorporated (NYSE:APD) (Allentown, Pennsylvania) recently secured a contract from Samsung Engineering Company Limited (SEO:028050) (Seoul, South Korea) to supply an air separation unit (ASU) for the chemical plant of National Industrial Gases Company (NIGC) (Jubail Industrial City) at Al Jubail.

NIGC is a subsidiary of state-owned Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SAU:2010) (SABIC) (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), and specializes in the supply of gases such as nitrogen, oxygen, argon, krypton and xenon for industrial use.

The ASU will be used at the NIGC air separation facility at Al Jubail in eastern Saudi Arabia, for which Samsung was awarded the build contract in July this year. The $304 million contract covers the complete process, including licensing, design, procurement and construction, on a lump-sum turnkey basis. When announced, the project was the eighth awarded to Samsung by SABIC. The plant is scheduled to be operational by 2011.

The ASU will use cryogenic, adsorption and membrane-based technologies to produce about 3,550 tons per day of oxygen, 3,600 tons per day of nitrogen, and 150 tons per day of argon from compressed air. The unit to be supplied will have the largest-ever cold box system that Air Products has designed, manufactured and shipped.

Air Products also has a history of successful projects, and the contract with Samsung is the latest in a series of successful bids in the Middle East. The company built the first ASU in the region in the 1950s and has established an office in Doha, Qatar, to service industrial gas customers in the region.

An ASU separates gases from air by a complex process of several stages. Air consists of 78% nitrogen and 20.9% oxygen, and the remaining fraction consists of carbon dioxide, hydrogen, and rare gases such as argon, neon and xenon. In the first stage of the separation process, the intake air is purified by adsorption and cryogenic means. The purified air is then compressed and cooled to temperatures of about minus 180 degrees Celsius, and is then allowed to expand into a separating column, where it further. In the separating column, air is split into individual gases in a purely physical process, relying on the different boiling points of the gases involved. Nitrogen, with a boiling point of minus 196 degrees Celsius, collects at the top of the separating column, while oxygen, with a boiling point of minus 183 degrees Celsius, collects toward the bottom. Argon has a boiling point of minus 186 degrees Celsius and is collected from around the middle of the separation column.

Established in 1940, Air Products is a leading company in the fields of semiconductor materials, home health care services, coatings and adhesives, as well as industrial atmospheric gases. The company employs more than 21,000 staff in more than 40 countries worldwide, and had revenue of more than $10.4 billion in 2008.

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