Can we make liquid nitrogen with a nitrogen generator?

The use of nitrogen is widespread in many fields, industry, laboratory, medical, food industry. It is usually bottled for small consumers and stored in large tanks for heavy users. It is therefore legitimate for some customers to question the possibilities of producing their nitrogen themselves with a nitrogen generator. You can visit novairindustries.com/ if you are interested in learning further more information about nitrogen generators.

How to make liquid nitrogen?

In fact, it is not the same product. The bottles contain pressurized gas while the large tanks are filled with liquid nitrogen. The difference is important since we are in the presence of the same molecule but in two different states. The gaseous state is the form present in the air and the liquid state is obtained by cooling the nitrogen below -196 ° C. Storage in the liquid phase makes it possible to store a larger quantity of nitrogen since 1 liter of liquid nitrogen concentrates 700 liters of gas after reheating. The industrial process used to achieve this result is called fractional distillation of liquid air.

Another solution to make liquid nitrogen

For some particular applications and for very small flow rates, there are nitrogen liquefiers. These devices use nitrogen gas produced by a generator and produce liquid nitrogen at a rate of a few liters per day. This equipment is suitable for consumers located in very remote locations or inaccessible by gas delivery trucks (mountains, desert areas). Nitrogen Generators use Carbon Molecular Sieve (CMS) technology to separate nitrogen and oxygen from the air, producing nitrogen from a source of compressed air at room temperature. The gas undergoes no transformation of its state, so it is technically impossible to produce liquid nitrogen with a simple generator of nitrogen gas.