Hello,

I would like to start a new series of articles "Chemistry in everyday life". In the meantime, I am still working on the contributions on bioenergy and e-fuels.

What do I actually invest in the category chemistry? In this series of contributions I would like to go into more detail about what you are actually invested in with some examples and illustrate application examples. I do not want to report further on the future potential. You have to determine this individually at your own discretion.

We turn air into money. The industrial gas manufacturers.

What are industrial gases?

Industrial gases are nothing more than gases produced on an industrial scale. So, according to the definition, almost anything in industry could be called an industrial gas.

Rather, these types of usages are called technical gases. They differ in the definition by their high degree of purity in the technical production. This already results in a conditional technical delimitation, which can only apply to gas mixtures that can already be described as "pure" in their composition. Due to the high degree of contamination in fossil carriers, natural fuel gases, such as natural gas and short hydrocarbons, such as methane, ethane, propane and butane, as well as natural carbon dioxide, are thus omitted.

So what can we use according to the definition?

The simplest gas mixture that everyone knows and should have at home is air. Roughly described, air consists of nitrogen N2, oxygen O2, noble gases and other small components. (Hydrogen, by the way, is not a component of air at all).

How can I decompose air?

The answer is quite simple: refrigeration.

Many mixtures of substances are thermally separated. Domestically, it can be easily explained in cooking. Some people add a shot of red wine to their well-known bolognese or tomato sauce. This must then be boiled out. The alcohol evaporates. A watery solution remains in the sauce.

You have to imagine it the other way around with air. Gases require extreme colds to liquefy. Nitrogen for example -196°C, oxygen -183°C.

Of course, it would not make sense to cool a certain amount of air down to this temperature. That would be very difficult without using ordinary cooling methods in general.

A remedy is the Joule-Thomson effect.

Simply explained:

You take a certain volume of gas. You now compress it. It becomes hot and the volume decreases. Now you expand this gas again. The heat is released to the environment, the volume is increased again, but the gas itself becomes cold.

If you now assume extremely large pressure differences, this leads to air liquefying.

Since the gases contained therein now have different condensation temperatures, they can be fractionated.

Imagine a container in which different temperatures prevail. At the bottom of the container it is warmest. Towards the top it gets colder. Consequently, you would have a layer of oxygen at the bottom, nitrogen and all other gases above it.

But this statement is only conditionally correct, because the order is of course different. In the consideration I have considered only nitrogen and oxygen as the largest components. In between would be the condensation points of various noble gases.

A very simple GIF is attached.

The major competitors.

Historically, it is actually disputed who can now first claim the discovery of air separation. Many roads lead to ... Germany? England?

The first large-scale refrigeration machine was invented by Carl von Linde between 1892/93. However, it was based on carbonic acid. Therefore not comparable to the technical approach used today.

In 1895, the British researcher William Hampson filed a patent for air liquefaction. Linde just a few days later in Germany.

Hampson later sold his patent to the British Oxygen Company (BOC). What became of Linde's patent is still clear today in everyday white lettering on a blue background. In 2006, Linde took over $LIN (+0,07 %) the British competitor. The British business is still operated under the BOC brand today.

A little later in 1902, Georges Claude also filed a patent for the liquefaction and separation of air - the foundation stone for Air Liquide $AI (+1,56 %) .

The still significant competitor Air Products & Chemicals $APD (-0,23 %) did not enter the market until 1940. Originally as a small-scale supplier of oxygen generators for the U.S. military.

The typical Far East representative Nippon Sanso $4091 (+3,8 %) was originally a manufacturer exclusively for oxygen. It was not until 1935 that the first large-scale air separation succeeded. The company received great notoriety and market share on a global scale in 2016. During the merger of Praxair and Linde, Praxair's European parts were transferred to Nippon due to antitrust conditions. In the European market, they are more known under the brand name "Nippon Gases".

But why industrial gases now?

All manufacturers are in competition not only for air. A very large part of their market is also made up of industrial gases, especially hydrogen. Hydrogen is produced on a large scale by steam reforming.

A synthesis gas consisting of short-chain hydrocarbons, such as methane, for example, is heated in a reactor with steam to such an extent that methane breaks up into its constituent parts. Hydrogen and carbon monoxide are produced, which are washed out in a further step to form carbon dioxide and further hydrogen.

The intended use of the individual gases

Industrial gas manufacturers have quite a considerable moat. Air is (still) a free raw material. It hardly gets any cheaper, so to speak.

Nitrogen:

The largest component of air enjoys huge economic benefits. Domestic frozen goods are usually "snap-frozen" with nitrogen, and in industry it is used for general protection as an inert gas.

Nitrogen continues to form the basis for all agrochemical and fertilizer technology. Many explosives are also nitrogen compounds.

Application in liquid form is found in research in superconductors, but also in the storage of biological and medical samples, as well as sperm and ova.

In civil engineering, there is application in soil freezing, as well as irreplaceable importance in materials technology, with regard to steel utilization and recycling of industrial metals.

Oxygen:

Without oxygen, no basis for steel. Each process of combustion can be different by a specific concentration of oxygen.

But also in a mixed ratio with nitrogen it is medically administered as breathing air.

Furthermore, one bubbles oxygen in lakes whose ecosystem has died to regenerate this.

The chain of examples for oxygen and nitrogen could of course be extended countless times. These are only some examples, which are to be regarded quite with a moat.

Further examples can be found in the field of welding. Modern welding processes hardly ever use acetylene as the welding medium. Welding of higher quality is achieved using inert gases. This is known as "inert gas welding". This describes subgrouping of arc welding. Whether MAG, MIG or flux-cored welding: materials and fabrications of our time must always meet the highest standards. In our industry, this applies above all to high quality standards, but more importantly to safety standards, which are less reliable in comparison with other welding methods. (Cold welding by man power excluded. The industrial workers, especially mechatronics and mechanics know what I mean in this respect 😂).

I hope I could put you in the right mood for the series of contributions. Which everyday object should I explain soon and which listed companies are involved in this?

All my suggestions originate with to a large extent my head. One may hardly believe it.

Additionally I always use the encyclopedia of chemistry (ISIN 978-3131027597)