Shenger Gas | Waste Heat Recovery System for Air Separation Units

Описание: Some air compressors lack a final-stage cooler, resulting in continuous discharge temperatures exceeding 100°C, even reaching 130–140°C. The high-temperature air is directly piped into the workshop, which not only increases safety risks such as burn hazards and pipeline aging but also forces the downstream air cooling tower to consume more energy for cooling, thereby raising overall system energy consumption.
However, this high-grade waste heat holds significant potential for recovery. In practice, some domestic oxygen generating stations have successfully utilized the exhaust heat from air compressors to preheat regeneration gas for molecular sieves, achieving stable and reliable energy savings. Taking a Laiwu project as an example, where the compressor discharge temperature consistently exceeds 120°C, if a heat exchanger is added to transfer this heat to heat dirty nitrogen to approximately 65°C, it is estimated that about 1,000 kWh of electricity could be saved daily. Additionally, this would effectively lower the ambient temperature in the workshop and improve working conditions. From a technical perspective, this solution is entirely feasible—the existing valve with a high resistance of 13 kPa can be replaced by an efficient heat exchanger. This approach not only enables heat recovery but also optimizes system pressure drop, offering dual benefits of energy conservation and operational improvement.