Gas separation equipment manufacturing industry is a new industry that was established and developed after the founding of New China. The development of air separation equipment for more than 60 years has mainly gone through four stages: imitation, technology introduction, independent research and development, and rapid development.
The first stage was from the 1950s to the 1970s. Our country's gas separation equipment manufacturing industry started from imitation, self-reliant, and gradually established an air separation equipment (ASP or ASU)manufacturing system. In 1953, Harbin No. 1 Machinery Factory successfully trial-produced two sets of 30Nm3/h (oxygen) air separation equipment with high-pressure processes. This incident ended the history of China’s inability to manufacture air separation equipment. At this stage, our country’s air separation equipment manufacturing industry has passed through the switching process of imitation stone cold accumulators, aluminum belt cold accumulator switching processes, and plate-fin heat exchanger switching processes. The main product grades are 1000, 3350, 6000Nm3/h air separation plant. However, the equipment at that time had various deficiencies such as difficulty in product yield and purity, high energy consumption, and poor reliability.
The second stage is from the late 1970s to the 1980s. Through the introduction of European large-scale air separation equipment design and manufacturing technology, our country’s large and medium-sized air separation equipment design and manufacturing levels have rapidly improved. The air separation process is advanced to a full low pressure process of molecular sieve adsorption. During this period, the air separation equipment grades were mainly 6000 and 10000 Nm3/h, and most of its users were metallurgical enterprises. In 1985, our country's first self-designed and manufactured supercharged turbine expansion unit was applied to a set of 1200 Nm3/h (nitrogen) liquefaction equipment, which accumulated preliminary experience for the wide application of supercharged turboexpansion units in air separation plants.
The third stage was the 1990s. On the basis of introducing, digesting and absorbing foreign technologies, China’s air separation equipment manufacturing industry independently developed a new generation of turboexpanders with large expansion ratios, molecular sieve purification at room temperature, and fine structured packing. With distillation tower technology and full distillation (hydrogen-free) argon production process air separation equipment, domestic enterprises have broken through the difficulties of air separation equipment design technology such as process organization, process calculation, and rectification calculation, and have mastered all the technologies of air separation equipment design and manufacturing Essentials, with independent intellectual property rights, the output, purity, oxygen extraction rate, unit oxygen energy consumption and other technical parameters of domestic air separation equipment have reached world-class levels. The maximum specification of domestic air separation products has increased from 10,000 Nm3/h to 15,000 Nm3/h. During this period, international big-name companies such as Linde were optimistic about China's large-scale air separation equipment market and introduced large-scale air separation equipment of 20,000, 30,000, and 60,000 Nm3/h to the market.
The fourth stage is the rapid development of our country’s air separation equipment industry after 2000. A large number of national air separation equipment manufacturers closely followed the pace of the world’s air separation technology development. Through independent innovation and independent research and development, they have developed new models suitable for metallurgy, petrochemicals and The large-scale air separation equipment with different internal compression processes required by the coal chemical industry has rapidly increased its maximum specifications from 20,000 Nm3/h to 80,000 ~ 120,000 Nm3/h, meeting the needs of national economic development. After decades of great development, the air separation industry has developed to a stage of catching up with the world's leading companies, and the technical performance indicators of domestic air separation are close to or even reaching foreign levels.