Nitrogen is an inert, odourless and colourless gas that doesn’t
sustain life. It is extremely useful in industry as it prevents fast and slow oxidation. Fires or explosions are perfect examples of fast oxidation. If a vessel is flushed with nitrogen, the oxygen is removed, along with the risk of fire or explosion as these processes need to be fuelled by oxygen. Nitrogen is also used to prevent slow oxidation, i.e. the corrosion of non-organic products or the growth of bacteria in food products.
The primary objective in switching to nitrogen was cost savings. We’re using two-thirds less CO2 than we were using before. An added benefit of nitrogen is that it’s dry, and now we can run all our pneumatics on nitrogen. One of the advantages we didn’t expect was no loss. We use all of the nitrogen we produce. There’s no loss. There’s no waste.
