Messer Group GmbH (Bad Soden, Germany; www.messergroup.com) has announced the successful commissioning of a new production facility, where the company has been producing the noble gases krypton and xenon, located in the central Chinese city of Panzhihua, Sichuan province. In 2012, Messer commissioned its first noble-gas unit in China – in Xiangtan, Hunan province, in the south of the country. With the new plants’ additional annual production capacity of 5,000 m3 of krypton and 450 m3 of xenon with a purity of 99.999%, Messer has reportedly become the largest producer of high-purity krypton and xenon in China.
“It was important to us to produce our own krypton and xenon. Thanks to our state-of-the-art facilities in Xiangtan and Panzhihua, we can now guarantee our local and international customers a reliable and top-quality supply,” emphasizes Werner Hickel, managing director of Messer in China.
The noble gases krypton and xenon are used in the manufacture of light bulbs and gas lasers, amongst other applications. Krypton is also used as an insulating gas filling for double-glazed windows.
During the process of air separation, which is used to obtain the air components oxygen and nitrogen, the noble gases accumulate in the liquid oxygen. Extracting them from the air component requires fine-tuned process steps such as pre-purification, pressure build-up, demethanization and distillation. Due to their low concentration in the atmosphere, a large amount of liquid oxygen is required to obtain them in significant quantities.