Patent Application
20110290371
The present invention relates to plants for filling cylinders with pure industrial gases or mixtures of pure gases or of special gases.
The gases involved in such filling operations are, for example:
The mixtures of special gases are mixtures of compressed or liquefied gases in cylinders, which mixtures are notably characterized by the following aspects:
These are therefore mixtures which are very accurate in terms of the compositions and/or which contain very low contents of compositions, these contents being at the ppm level.
These characteristics entail complex production equipment in order, notably:
Incorporating such equipment into a production plant requires specialist design studies and suitable buildings (for example buildings with controlled temperature). The lead times involved in the design phase and the cost of appropriate buildings are great. In particular, the costs are too high if the market is too small or sometimes difficult to justify because of a risky economic environment and a little-known market or an unstable economic climate.
Moreover, it has been found that the sophistication of plants is evolving rapidly. The industrial world is increasingly switching over from so-called heavy industry to units producing consumer products and goods. This is leading first to a change in the size of plants and second to a call for increasingly sophisticated very different production machinery originating from highly varied geographic locations.
Whether a plant is to be big or small, simple or complex, the approach followed when building such a plant has remained conventionally the same. “Turnkey” solutions are very often employed. These have the advantage to industry of forcing the supplier or suppliers to comply with a preset technical and financial objective and thus guarantee industry (the end user customer) results. In consequence, the production of a plant as a “turnkey” solution is organized as follows:
First of all, the production machinery is built at various existing plants, for example in already-developed countries.
These various machines are sent over land or by sea to the final site.
These machines are set up in a traditional or prefabricated building that has already been erected on the final site.
The machines are set up and connected together (fluid, electricity, pipe work, etc.) inside the building on the final site.
The machines are tested on the final site prior to start-up.
This conventional method involving distant turnkey industrial units, for example situated in developing countries, does have a good number of uncontrollable factors associated with it. All that is needed is for the ordered equipment to arrive when the erection of the building on the final site has been delayed and there is a risk that this equipment will remain in crates for several months or even more. This leads to degradation of the machinery and requires expensive reconditioning.
Problems arise just as frequently if the machines are not all delivered within the agreed deadline. A missing element in the middle of the line can prevent a plant or a part of a plant from being started up in its entirety.
With this conventional turnkey plant solution, several partners generally share in the project at various stages and at locations which are geographically remote from one another. The production plant appoints equipment specialists to supervise the setting-up, start-up and final acceptance phases. The design and production engineering concern appoints specialist engineers for the detailed design, set-up drawings and testing. This results in numerous communication problems. This is particularly the case when the industrial end user or a local company has adopted responsibility for erecting the building and installing the equipment.
By transferring the plants around it is possible to reduce the production costs and more effectively amortise the investments for new industrial entities. However, the current situation is essentially restricted to providing the option of transporting the various machines, respective internal receptacles of the type used generally for goods that can be moved around by sea or by road (using trucks). That does not reduce the times and costs below certain limits because the machines have to be loaded into the receptacles and removed therefrom and then the production line has to be reassembled.
One technical problem addressed by the present invention is therefore that of providing a plant for the industrial production of mixtures of pure gases or of special gases, which plant can be dismantled, transported and reassembled simply and quickly.
As will be seen in greater detail in what follows, the plant proposed by the invention is notable in that, in order to achieve such flexibility:
Included among the essential equipment that makes up the plant and that is secured to a wall of the container there are, in particular, items of apparatus for the vacuum drying of the cylinders prior to first filling, for removing residual gases from the cylinders before they are refilled, for producing mixtures, for purifying gases, and analyzers, etc.
It may be noted that the prior art contains documents such as documents EP-366 559 and WO 2006/123373 which describe containers that can be transported by sea or by land and contain machinery intended to be used in a plant; said containers, once combined with one another in an arrangement that is to be defined, form a true plant.
Thus, by way of illustration, WO 2006/123373 relates to an arrangement of containers containing apparatus needed for the intended production method (it is aimed first and foremost at the manufacture of insulating panels even though it cites other possible applications such as the “packaging of liquid products”, without anywhere describing the special case of the production of gaseous mixtures and its filling into cylinders. However, and above all, it does not describe a plant that the operators can enter, and in which they can move around, produce a product, move the cylinders around in a miniaturized space because quite clearly the author anticipates the presence of empty containers “adjacent” to the plant allowing operators access to “the production plant” and quite logically the walls of these containers are then open and in communication. It can therefore be clearly seen from the above that WO 2006/123373 is concerned with a quite different type of plant and quite logically WO 2006/123373 is not facing the same set of problems and therefore is not in any way proposing a solution that technically addresses the problems now presented.
One subject of the present invention is therefore a plant for filling cylinders with gas using pure gases and/or mixtures of pure gases or of special gases, comprising:
Moreover, the plant according to the invention may adopt one or more of the following features:
As will have been understood from reading about the sizings preferred by the invention, preference is given to ISO containers and it will be recalled that:
According to preferred implementations of the invention, the plant comprises a single 40-foot ISO container or, alternatively, 2 ISO containers:
As was mentioned earlier on in the present description, the plant preferably comprises a ventilation system which on the one hand provides control over the temperature inside the container, this being so as to allow work to take place inside the container irrespective of the temperature outside but also so as to allow accurate mixtures to be created by measuring the pressure-temperature of the components of the mixtures, and the ventilation system also allowing any accidental leaks of toxic and/or flammable gases to be diluted in the internal atmosphere of the container so that there are no damaging consequences.
It will have been understood that this system is especially well justified for the handling of flammable gases (such as H2 . . . . ) or toxic gases (such as CO, H2S, NO2 . . . ). Further, the objective of its presence is therefore to avoid the build-up of such gases inside the container.
Such a build-up could of course result only from an accidental leak because, as will have been appreciated, in such plants that handle toxic and/or flammable gases, every step is also taken to limit such risks (vents that vent to the outside, filters, collective valves, use of high-pressure equipment, use of corrosion-resistant materials, etc., which measures are well known to those skilled in the art).
Depending on the gases handled it is possible of course to conceive of numerous configurations and positioning of the extraction points, particularly whether these are in a low position and/or in a high position in order to collect gases that are heavier and also those that are lighter than air.
Detection of the presence of a toxic or flammable gas, for example by detectors located inside the vents that discharge to the outside of the container, will lead to chosen actions including: an increase in the air renewal flow rate, visible or audible alarms, the cutting-off of the electrical power supplied to most of the container equipment with the exception of the forced ventilation equipment and emergency lighting, etc.
According to one of the embodiments of the invention, the plant comprises two parts:
Another subject of the invention is a method of preparing a mixture of special gases in a cylinder implementing a plant as defined hereinabove connected to at least two sources of special gases external to the plant.
According to one of the embodiments of the method of the invention, the cylinder that is to be filled is connected to just one gas source at a time.
According to one of the embodiments of the method of the invention, it comprises the steps:
The container used may be an ISO container that can be transported, for example, by land and by sea. Thus it is possible to standardize the manufacture of the complete plant at a factory in order to optimize production costs, and to withdraw the container/plant if necessary and transport it to a more suitable location in order to recoup the investment.
Contrary to the prior art documents cited hereinabove, the equipment contained in the container is attached to the walls of the container. Specifically, the components such as, for example, the production equipment or the analysis apparatus is fixed to the walls of the container containing the plant according to the invention. As already explained hereinabove, on the one hand such an arrangement allows the users to access this equipment from inside the container while at the same time allowing this equipment to be connected together and, on the other hand, to gas sources situated outside the container, using piping attached to the walls of the container. This affords a certain space saving and therefore allows the plant to be better miniaturized, but also ensures better stability of measurements thanks to the securing of the apparatus.
By way of illustration, the plant may be placed inside an ISO container measuring 12 meters long, 3 meters wide and high, or alternatively two ISO containers measuring 6 meters long positioned end to end.
It should be noted that, according to the prior art, both in terms of the filling of pure gases and of the filling of mixtures of pure or special gases, the quantity of gas to be filled and the quantities of raw materials needed mean that a large-sized building housing the filling plant has always hitherto been considered.
Other specifics and advantages will become apparent from reading the following description which is given with reference to the figures in which:
The first “mixture production” part 2 has an interior temperature controlled by a temperature control means. For example, such a means is a heating or an air conditioning system.
Said part 2 houses the equipment 4 used for producing the mixtures and the apparatus used for analyzing the composition of the mixtures here situated in zone 5.
One example of equipment 4 for producing said mixtures is depicted in
Accurate measurement, for example using manometry, of the quantities of gases to be mixed is preferably carried out using equipment and cylinders for filling in a temperature-controlled space. This controlled temperature aspect is an essential feature in obtaining appreciable reliability and accuracy on an industrial scale. Temperature control is needed for the production of accurate mixtures using a barometric method.
The “cylinder preparation” part 3 comprises at least one means 6 of emptying out the residual gases contained in the cylinders that are to be filled, at least a means 8 of cleaning and/or passivating the cylinders that are to be filled, and at least one means 9 of homogenizing the produced mixtures. The plant 1 is wholly contained in a transportable container 10 the footprint of which measures less than 45 m2, the footprint preferably ranging between 34 m2 and 40 m2. The height of the container 10 is, for example, between 2.5 meters and 3.5 meters, and the height is preferably 3 meters.
In practice, personnel enter the container via a door 11 and proceed with filling the cylinders 7 situated initially in the part 3 and intended for the preparation (cleaning, passivation, emptying) of the cylinders 7. Said filling of the mixtures is performed in part 2, the temperature of which is controlled, using the mixture production equipment 4.
The cylinder 7 intended to be filled with a mixture of special gases is first of all prepared, if necessary, for example by cleaning using the cleaning and/or passivating means 8, and/or by emptying out the residual gases from the cylinder if this cylinder has already been used, using an emptying means 6.
If it has already been used, said cylinder will therefore probably be contaminated with residual gases. The passivation means 8 is, for example, an oven into which the cylinder 7 is introduced for a few hours. Once the cylinder 7 is ready, the user takes possession of it then rolls or alternatively carries it to the temperature-controlled part 2 of the plant. The user can then proceed with filling the mixture of special gases into the cylinder 7 thus prepared. When several cylinders are ready, the user can transport several at a time in order to optimize his work time and productivity and stow said cylinders at a dedicated location 11.
The mixture production equipment 4 is depicted schematically in
The filling line set 12 is also connected to a network 15 of sources of special gases which is located outside the container 10 in which the plant according to the invention is located, as depicted in
The quantities of special gases that make up the mixture are measured and checked using measurement and checking means such as a manometer 16 and a weighing system 17. Depending on the degree of accuracy desired for the production of the desired mixture, the equipment 4 comprises either a manometer 16 and a weighing system 17, or just one of these two. Said mixture producing equipment 4 is situated in the temperature-controlled part 2 of the container 10 and so the stable temperature allows the pressure to be measured reliably.
In order to avoid measurements being perturbed for example as a result of vibrations on the floor of the container 10, the weighing system 17 here is arranged on a support 18 independent of said container 10. The base of the support 18 is situated below the container 10 floor level. For example, this base of the support 18 of the system 17 rests on a chassis welded to the container 10 independently of the chassis carrying the floor of the container 10, so as to limit as far as possible any vibrations incurred by, for example, people or bottles moving around.
Once the mixture has been created, it is analyzed using analysis apparatus situated in zone 5 of the container 10. The analysis apparatus is, for example:
It is good to note that the layout of the components in the plant according to the invention is such that the user moves around as little as possible. The cylinders do not therefore have to be moved very much. Further, the space between the production equipment 4 and the analysis apparatus is large enough that the user can move around but small enough for the plant to be miniaturized as far as possible thus limiting the movements of cylinders.
Moreover, such a plant requires only a very low number of personnel to run it. By comparison with real-size plants in existence at the present time, the number of individuals working on the plant 1 according to the invention is very small and the distance required for the transportation of cylinders during the mixture filling process is reduced to the minimum.
When analysis is complete, the cylinders filled with mixtures of special gases are transported to part 3 of the container 10 to what is known as a homogenizing means 9. Said means 9 is, for example, a cylinder roller.
It is possible that a mixture of gases at the end of the filling of a cylinder will not have a homogenous composition throughout the cylinder when, for example, the cylinder is filled in a vertical position and when the constituent introduced last is of a lower density than the previous constituents. One way of homogenizing the mixture is to place the cylinder in a horizontal position and to revolve it about its axis at a speed of several revolutions per minute for a minimum of ten minutes or so.
The means 6, 8 and 9 are automated.
When this operation is complete, the user takes the cylinder filled with the desired gas mixture out of the container 10 and sets it down at a storage site 19 whence a batch of cylinders will be transported to the customer. The storage site 19 is, for example, situated outside the container 10.
One embodiment of the plant 1 according to the invention may be restricted to the manufacture of just a few cylinders of mixtures per day, for example 8 cylinders per eight-hour working day or the equivalent of 2000 cylinders per year, considering mixtures containing three compounds on average. This type of plant is therefore capable of supplying a market corresponding to the needs of several refineries and/or petrochemical industries and/or car plants.
As has been stated,
By way of illustration and to give a better feel for the invention, practical examples of flow rates are given here, with:
By way of illustration and to give a better feel for the invention, practical examples of flow rates are given here, with:
The raw materials used for producing these mixtures, which may be flammable and/or toxic gases, are positioned in sources connected to the equipment 4, 13, 12 of the plant 1 from the outside. This saves space in the ISO container 10 and makes it easier to manage the risks of ignition and explosion in the event of leaks of flammable gas from the cylinders.
This plant 1 is capable of producing mixtures of special gases required by the key users: refineries, petrochemical plants, the automotive industry and research laboratories for example.
Said plant according to the invention can also advantageously be used as a plant for conducting tests on limited numbers of cylinders and if these tests prove conclusive, a decision may be made to install a larger sized plant in order to increase production.
By way of example, here are some non-exhaustive lists of mixtures of special gases that can be produced by the plant according to the invention.
Examples of Mixtures for Analysis Apparatus:
Examples of Mixtures for Measuring Atmospheric Pollution:
Examples of Hydrocarbon Mixtures Used in Refinery and Petrochemical Plants:
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0856226 | Sep 2008 | FR | national |
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/FR2009/051652 | 9/1/2009 | WO | 00 | 7/26/2011 |
