Question

The creation of liquid oxygen starts with air being compressed and then sent through a heat exchanger to be cooled to 10 ^oC. The stream enters a condenser where water is removed at 99.9% efficiency. The air stream continues to a set of filters further removing impurities in the air (CO₂, etc.) with 99.8% efficiency. After leaving the filters, the stream enters a set of distillation columns where Argon, Nitrogen, and Oxygen are separated. For this problem, two distillation columns will be used. The first column separates the Argon from the Oxygen and Nitrogen to a stream containing 73 wt% Argon, 11% Oxygen, 14% Nitrogen, and the rest of the impurities. The second column separates the Nitrogen from the Oxygen. The nitrogen stream is 99.99% nitrogen with no Argon.

a.Draw and label this process.

b.Write out all the material balances and important equations.

c.Which stream is the distillate from the first column and why? What about the second column?

Answer 1