Nitrogen
Our nitrogen services to the Oil & Gas Industry are numerous and include:
- High volume nitrogen purging of petrochemical plants, refinery process systems and pipelines.
We have a complete fleet of mobile liquid nitrogen tanks, vaporisers and pump units to assist with shutdown nitrogen requirements, reducing the duration of the initial decommissioning and re-commissioning purges, With our new range of high volume nitrogen pump & vaporisers we are able to save some plants several days in these critical path operations, whether for plant turnarounds or unplanned maintenance programmes. We can pump and vaporise nitrogen with flow rates from 1,000 Nm3/hour up to 50,000 Nm3/hour
Nitrogen Purging
Nitrogen Purging in Process
Reactor cooldown time saved by using NICOOL technology
Normal cooling of reactors, hydrocrackers, reformers, cat crackers etc can typically take several days to cooldown from operating temperature to man-entry temperature.
We have a number of techniques for enhanced cooling of reactors, the choice will depend on the type of reactor to be cooled. The preferred option of most refineries is called (NICOOL), which uses a technique of injecting liquid nitrogen into the hot recycle gas stream. This speeds up the cooling process of the reactor and catalyst significantly quicker than standard cooling techniques. Other methods rely on the injection of cold nitrogen, which is a “once-through” technique. Call our engineering team to find out how much time we can save during your next reactor cooldown.
Nitrogen Reactor Cooling
Drying using Nitrogen
- Most hydrocarbon liquid and gas systems & pipelines need to be dried after hydrostatic testing or turnarounds. Many systems can be dried using compressed air or super-dry air. Some systems e.g. Ethylene, LNG, Hydrogen etc need to be dried to dewpoints which can only be achieved by using dry nitrogen. Dewpoints as low as minus 600C can be achieved using our mobile nitrogen pumps/vaporisers.
Nitrogen Drying
Pneumatic pressure testing of systems, pipelines, vessels and process plants.
Whether it’s a small vessel or system that can be tested using nitrogen cylinders, or a large process plant or pipeline which needs thousands of cubic meters of nitrogen, we have the resources and personnel to provide a professional and safe approach to all pressure testing needs.
NHLD (Nitrogen & Helium Leak Detection) Pressurising and Leak Detection of high integrity systems and equipment using nitrogen with 1% helium.
Typical process plant leak testing with air and soapy water is the traditional method and sometimes can provide reasonable results. However, this method can be prone to operator error, when small leaks can be ignored or undetected. Using the helium leak detection technique is a guarantee that the system under test will be leak tight prior to start-up. The system to be tested is pressurised using nitrogen with a 1% helium trace gas. Using mobile mass spectrometers, our technicians can find a leak and quantify it to 1 cubic foot per year.
Nitrogen Pressure Testing
High velocity blowing of systems & pipelines
Some high integrity pipelines require a high velocity gas flow to remove small particulate matter, dust etc. Oxygen supply lines and turbine feed lines are typical examples. Our high volume nitrogen pumps & vaporisers can achieve the 35 m/sec linear velocity as specified to achieve the level of cleanliness for these lines, even up to 24” diameter.
High Velocity Blowing
Our nitrogen services to the Oil & Gas Industry are numerous and include:
Pipe freezing-Pipeline Isolation.
We have a range of freeze jackets and liquid nitrogen tanks to facilitate freezing of lines to allow for intervention and/or maintenance to be carried out on piping systems.
Pipefreezing
We have a complete fleet of mobile liquid nitrogen tanks (8,000 ltr – 21,000 ltr capacity) including a 24 ton (35,000 ltr) road tanker which are available for rent.
