According to an embodiment of the invention, nitrogen gas of an air separation unit is used to cool the gas formed in a reservoir of liquid from an MEOH unit that is supplied with oxygen by said air separation unit.

The method and the device arc used for the cryogenic decomposition of air in a distillation column system for separating nitrogen and oxygen, said system having a first high-pressure column (23), a low-pressure column (25, 26), and three condenser-evaporators, namely a high-pressure column head condenser (27), a low-pressure column bottom evaporator (28), and an auxiliary condenser (29; 228).

The present invention relates to a system for treating and cooling a hydrocarbon stream, comprising a gas treatment stage comprising a pre-cooler to cool at least part of the hydrocarbon feed against cooling water, a first cooling stage comprising one or more first water coolers, a second cooling stage comprising one or more second water coolers. The system comprises a cooling water unit arranged to receive a stream of cooling water and supply a first part of the stream of cooling water to a chilling unit to obtain a stream of chilled cooling water and pass the stream of chilled cooling water to a selection of the at least one pre-cooler, the one or more first water coolers and the one or more second water coolers.

A chiller can be configured as a chiller for a gasification system or other type of system or plant. In some embodiments, the chiller can be configured to utilize a single heat source, such as low grade waste heat in the form of hot water, and/or low pressure steam to drive one or more absorption-based chillers to cool inlet air to one or more adsorbers of a pre-purification unit (PPU). In the event of the detection of an undesired impurity spike (e.g. carbon dioxide spike, etc.) an additional amount of heat source can be withdrawn from the gasification system to increase the level of cooling the absorption chiller can provide to improve the removal of impurities. An automated control loop can be utilized in some embodiments. The control loop can be configured to check for an impurity concentration and adjust operations accordingly.

The invention relates to a method and device for generating two purified partial air streams under different pressures. A total air stream (1) is compressed to a first total air pressure. The compressed total air stream (5) is cooled with cooling water under the first total air pressure by way of heat exchange (4, 6). The heat exchange with cooling water for cooling the total air stream (5) is carried out as a direct heat exchange in a first direct contact cooler (6), at least in part. The cooled total air stream (9) is divided into a first partial air stream (10) and a second partial air stream (11). The first partial air stream (10) is purified in a first purification device (18) under the first total air pressure, generating the first purified partial air stream (19). The second partial air stream (11) is re-compressed to a higher pressure (12), which is higher than the first total air pressure. The re-compressed second partial air stream (14) is cooled with cooling water in a second direct contact cooler (15) by way of direct heat exchange (13, 15). The cooled second partial air stream (17) is purified under the higher pressure in a second purification device (30), thus generating the second purified partial air stream (31).

A process and air separation plant for producing one or more air products by cryogenic separation of air in an air separation plant wherein a first fraction and a second fraction of feed air quantity are post-compressed in a post-compressor from a first pressure level to a second pressure level at least 3 bar above the first pressure level, and are extracted from a post-compressor jointly at the second pressure level, impure nitrogen, the nitrogen content of which lies below an overhead product of a high-pressure column, is extracted from the high-pressure column at the first pressure level and is expanded using a second turboexpander which is mechanically coupled to a first booster, and a fluid enriched with argon is extracted from a low-pressure column, is depleted of argon and is recycled into the low-pressure column.

The present invention relates to a cryogenic air separation process that provides high pressure oxygen for an oxy-fired combustion of a fuel (e.g., a carbonaceous fuel). The air separation process can be directly integrated into a closed cycle power production process utilizing a working fluid, such as CO.sub.2. Beneficially, the air separation process can eliminate the need for inter-cooling between air compression stages and rather provide for recycling the adiabatic heat of compression into a process step in further methods wherein an additional heat supply is beneficial.

In a method for supplying nitrogen to a combustion chamber, gaseous nitrogen (9) is drawn off from an air separation unit (7) at a first pressure, the nitrogen is compressed in at least two stages (C1, C2) of a nitrogen compressor and sent to a combustion chamber (25) at a second pressure, which is the output pressure of the last stage (C3) of the nitrogen compressor, between two stages of the nitrogen compressor the nitrogen is humidified by direct contact in passing through a contactor (17) supplied at its top with water, and the humidified nitrogen is compressed in at least one stage of the nitrogen compressor and sent to the combustion chamber.

An air fractionation plant in which a cooling water circuit having a recooling apparatus is provided for cooling compressed air, where the recooling apparatus is configured for cooling cooling water using cooling air. The recooling apparatus is configured so as to cool the cooling water, at least at a wet bulb temperature of the cooling air of more than 289 K, to a temperature which is not more than 3 K above the wet bulb temperature. A corresponding operating method and a control facility are likewise provided.