A plant for separating gases from the air comprises, in the direction of circulation of the stream of air: a compression means for compressing the stream of air to a pressure P1 of between 1.15 bar abs and 2 bar abs, a TSA adsorption unit, and a cryogenic distillation unit, with the adsorption unit comprising at least two adsorbers A1 and A2 each having a parallelepipedal casing arranged horizontally and comprising: an air stream inlet and outlet, two fixed bed adsorbent masses each likewise parallelepipedal with faces parallel to the faces of the casing, and a set of volumes allowing the stream of air to traverse the two adsorbent masses horizontally, in parallel, over the whole cross section of each of the adsorbent masses and throughout their thicknesses.

An apparatus for separating air by cryogenic distillation comprises N air compressors (C1, C2, C3) connected so as to receive air at ambient pressure and designed to produce air at a first pressure above 12 bar absolute, N being at least 3, each of the compressors being driven by a single asynchronous motor (M1, M2, M3), the total power of the compressors being at least 10 MW.

A process for cryogenic air separation and liquefaction, including purifying and compressing an inlet air stream, thereby producing a compressed inlet air stream, dividing the compressed inlet air stream into an ASU portion and a liquefaction portion, introducing the ASU portion into an air separation unit, thereby producing a gaseous oxygen steam and a gaseous nitrogen stream, and introducing the liquefaction portion, the gaseous oxygen steam and the gaseous nitrogen stream into a liquefaction unit, thereby producing a liquid nitrogen stream and a liquid oxygen stream. Wherein, the air separation unit is located more than 200 meters from the liquefaction unit, and there is no compression driven by external energy within 200 meters of the liquefaction unit.