Air Separation Unit (ASU)

Cooling and liquefying pure gases requires a large amount of energy.

Air separation units (ASUs) separate pure gases from air by cooling the air until it liquefies, then selectively distill the components at their various boiling temperatures.

All of the cold process equipment has to be kept within an insulated cold box enclosure that contains the cryogenic heat exchangers, distillation columns and associated valves and piping.

The cryogenic separation process requires very tight control integration between the heat exchangers and separation columns to obtain good efficiency. To achieve the ultra low distillation temperatures, an ASU requires a refrigeration cycle that operates by means of the Joule–Thomson effect. The cooling and separation of the high purity gases requires a large amount energy for the refrigeration cycle to work effectively.

Emerson's advanced distillation solutions help reduce operational costs by lowering energy consumption while increasing column throughput.

The application of Emerson's process automation and control technologies will assist you in predicting upsets before they occur, while minimizing energy consumption per unit of feed. Additionally, our real-time data on feedstock composition and quality provides unique insight into your process performance to help reduce product quality variation and off-spec production.

Emerson's asset management and machinery health condition monitoring solutions enable you to proactively manage your smart field devices and critical process equipment assets to improve plant reliability.