What makes Specialty Gases so special?

Most typically, specialty gases are individually produced combinations designed for the use of a single client and require far more effort to be done than industrial gases packed. Specialized gases generally relate to gas calibration, span gases, transporter gases, bump test gases and null gases. These can be pure gases or gas mixtures, which include components at a level of 100% to part per billion, and occasionally even part per trillion. Custom or off-shelf specialty gases may be available. 

Characteristics of Specialty Gas 

What makes the specialty gas so special are the characteristics of specialty gas. The characteristics of specialty gas include the fact that specialty gases with better purity and precision than ever before require today's high-tech industrial operations. A growing number of requirements for these gases are now reduced to parts per billion (ppb) (ppt). Gas supply businesses must guarantee that the most appropriate use for specialty gases is purified gases or mixes. These non-standard exotic 'specialty' gases split the gas supply industry into two unique divisions compared to normal medical and industrial gases.

Special gas applications are introduced daily. The vast range of applications includes air quality control, biological growth checks, alcohol breathing checks, calorimetric tests, auto exhaust tests, confined space monitoring, commercial plunging, emission checks, and natural gas trading. Applications include process control, soil and water measurements, olfactometry, solvent, VOC, and stack emission control. 

Pureness can reach 99,99999 percent within pure specialty grades, 7.0. Higher purity means less and less contaminants which create issues in the manufacturing or measuring of high-tech instruments and analytical measurements. This high degree of purity is one of the differentiators that make a specialty gas 'special' compared with the identical gas of industrial or medical purity. For example, oxygen is a popular medicinal gas and must be pure for breathing. It is also utilized in industrial applications, such as cutting and welding. Oxygen is also utilized for specialty gas applications like laboratory instruments, however in the laboratory use the purity of oxygen required is even higher. 

Compared with medicinal or industrial gases, a further characteristic of specialty gas is the product's complexity. A blend of argon and carbon dioxide to weld steel may be utilized in a gas mixture for the welding application whereas a gas mixture used in a medical application could harness a mixture of nitrous oxide and anesthetic oxygen. A mixture of 20 or 30 compounds might exist instead of two or three distinct chemicals in the mix. Furthermore, the end-user might need to mix the component with a precision of +/- 1 percent instead of blending these chemicals to a tolerance of more or less 5 percent. This is a third specialty gas differentiator; the high mix tolerance to the specification. The complexity of the unique gas mix might be enhanced by one or two elements, for example a few parts per million, at extremely little concentration (ppm). This makes it extremely hard to produce and manage the gas mixture at the point of usage.

Preventing contamination is crucial, since a few ppm of this contamination might occur and drastically change the mixture's composition as well as even the slightest amount of contamination in the surrounding air. Another important distinction between industrial and medicinal gases is the scale of supply. End customers are often considerably smaller than the other gases to want specific gases. The amount of gas is consumed and how many consumers demand this specific item also affects the supply scale. Some of the most popular industrial gases are delivered to clients by pipelines in the number of tens of thousands of tons per day or by road tankers in a bulk format of between 20 and 30 tons, supplying liquefied gas to customers and on-site vaporizing for the production of gas necessary. This is an affordable means of purchasing huge volumes of common industrial or medicinal gases. Special gases, on the other hand, are normally provided in rods with around 10 cubic meters of gas or in small mobile cylinders which hold just 1 cubic meter.

Specialty Gas Production

Specific gases and mixes are often unique goods produced for a particular client use and need far more product engineering compared to typical products for industry or medical gases. Therefore, they are not necessarily products off the shelf, and in the most sophisticated of situations they might take several weeks to manufacture. The great purity and excessive complexity of the gases specializing in their production has repercussions.

If the raw material of the needed purity does not come from it, the gas manufacturer needs to acquire the maximum purity accessible in order to obtain sufficiently high purity for the end product. Packaging alone is a problem. Since the gas is often required in small quantities, it is usually provided in cylinders and the introduction of the specialty gas in the cylinders requires extraordinary care. In order to maintain the integrity of the product, building materials for these cylinders are also highly crucial. While steel cylinders may be utilized for most medical and industrial gases and a few specialty gases, specialty gas products frequently need aluminum alloy cylinders that are better compatible with cleansing and specialist chemical substances. The valves on the top of the cylinder must guarantee the contents remain within and the pollutants kept outside the environment. Therefore, the production of valves, also special materials such as inox steel or a very high-quality brass are required. 

The packaging of specialty gas mixtures is a difficult operation as component's tolerance or precision must be ensured. Sometimes these highly precision mixes are necessary to calibrate a measurement and to maintain the integrity of the goods, gas manufacturers must use very complex filling equipment and procedures. In order to remove traces of moisture or other impurities before the product is injected, specialty gas cylinders must be heated, evacuated and purged, therefore generating yet another stage of production which is not always necessary for the majority of industrial or health gases.

Finally, quality controls related to the manufacturing of specialty gas are far greater than those involved with industrial and medical gases. In order to analyze and check the composition of various specialty gases, sophisticated laboratory apparatus is needed and clients typically receive a certificate of analysis. In instances such as chemical-reactive molecules in a gas mixture, this examination is repeated over a long period to achieve consistent findings indicating a gas combination that is stable. This is another reason why unique gas combinations have increased their manufacturing lead time in comparison to more conventional industrial gas mixtures that may be used to solder or for the purpose of welding. 

Specialty Gas Equipment 

In order to retain optimum performance, complex industrial operations and instruments require high-quality goods. Specialty gas distribution systems must respond to growing demands for optimal performance standards, new analysis methodologies and manufacturing improvements. Impurities of a few ppm might have severe implications for the end user. The requirements for regulators and valves in such conditions are quite high and the equipment must be able to handle high and low pressure, big and tiny flows and must also be appropriate for reactive, combustible, toxic or poisonous gases, which are highly pure inert gases.

Therefore, it's also the job of end-users to guarantee that their gas-delivery devices are able to retain the high pureness or precision of the gas from the supply cylinder up until they are operational, beyond the highly precise manufacturing techniques necessary for specialty gas products. Gas quality is only as good as the gas distribution infrastructure at this key stage.

Specialty gases are typically employed together with costly analytical instruments or sensitive engineering equipment so that they are protected from any contaminants that may be imported from the air in an environment by utilizing the correct supplying equipment. As potentially hazardous chemicals can exist in specialty gases, safety and the environment are key considerations and the gas distribution systems must fulfil strict health and safety standards of anyone working with them. Many specialty gases are classed as hazardous - poisonous, carcinogenic, flame retardant and high-pressure storage and safety law tightens fast to improve gas handling and use to whole new heights. This law affects the registration, classification and labelling, transportation and packaging as well as storage, the product information and the disposal of products. The functioning of the gas handling equipment is important and needs to be adapted to the advanced gas processing. This includes elements like regulator pressure reduction and purging functionality. Construction materials once again are essential for the integrity of the distribution system, in particular when corrosive components are included in specialty gases. Joints, moving components, seals and fittings must be tight and impermeable considerably tighter than for industrial/medical gas supply machinery.

The phrase 'helium leak tightness' is commonly applied in such applications for leak potential, referring to how much helium leaks out from the interior of the system to the outside in one second under particular circumstances. In general, one cubic centimeter of helium may leak from a component in an hour using industrial and medical equipment. Other gas distribution systems might show considerably better leaks at the opposite end of the spectrum, able to preserve their integrity for the loss of one cubic centimeter of helium, up to and well beyond 30 years. 

Sophisticated materials such as stainless steel, thanks to their exceptional corrosion-free properties as well as the outstanding sealing properties, may be used to prevent any interaction between the specialty gas product and the material for the building of the distribution system. These components also need to be impermeable, in terms of gas leakage and ambient gases into the system. The total number of leaks is crucial, and all connections, components, pipes, and tubing must be as leak-free as feasible. Instead of the cast component for industrial and medical gas systems which does not supply tight housings to specialty gases, bar stock and forged components have been favored. These specialty gas distributors usually contain PTFE tubes or flexible, wall-mounted, stainless steel tubes, since rubber hosing, frequently used for industrial gases, is porous, for the connections between the gas cylinder, gas distribution system and application.

"The functioning of gas handling equipment is vital and must be appropriate for the handling of gas."

To provide uncontaminated and unyielding connections, compression fittings and orbital welds are also employed. If very low ppm or especially corrosive blends are provided, metal gaskets are also preferred over alternatives from rubber and plastic. The internal roughness of the dispensing system is another issue and must be smooth in order to guarantee that impurities like oxygen and water cannot be attached to the rough surface in the purging process. The interior roughness of stainless-steel tubing is hence preferable to copper. When a new system is commissioned or when a cylinder is changed, no contaminants remain in the system. For this reason, the repair or addition to the system or the replacement of a cylinder linked to the gas distribution system must be extremely careful when connecting or breaking an existing specialty gas pipeline. 

Technicians open up a closed system to the environment successfully in these circumstances. Highly pure argon is typically utilized to protect the joints smooth and non-porous during welding in stainless steel pipes for specialized gases applications. In addition, following every soldering operation the gas used to test the system must have a quality equivalent to the product for which the system is employed. A less quality gas purging might lead to moisture and other contaminants which can be difficult to remove later on.

Other tests before a specialty gas piping installation can be carried out, depending on process gas complexity, might include vacuum testing and helium leak testing. The demands for gas handling equipment in the gas industry are often much higher than in the industrial gas environment. For example, it is usually normal in these applications to check for the strength of the helium leak. In general, one cubic centimeter of helium may leak from a component in an hour using industrial and medical equipment.