Accurately Calculate Nitrogen Requirement for Pressure Purging

December 4th, 2011

Olaleye S Adio MEng CEng MIChemE

GECL Oil & Gas Consultant
olaleye.adio@glocalecl.com

The start-up of process plants containing hydrocarbon feed streams are usually preceded by
creating an inert atmosphere within the system. One of the options of creating this inert
atmosphere is via pressure purging, using nitrogen.

Pressure purging is based on using nitrogen to inert a system to low oxygen concentration
below which a flammable atmosphere is not sustainable. To achieve this, nitrogen is used to
raise the pressure of the system (e.g vessel, heat exchanger, piping etc) from initial condition,
which is usually atmospheric, to a chosen value (x barg). With availability of pressure
control from the nitrogen header into the system, the pressure of the system does not have to
reach the nitrogen system pressure.

After pressurizing (to x barg), the system is vented back to the initial (atmospheric)
condition. This pressure-venting cycle is repeated until the required inert condition is
achieved within the system.

The following steps are used to determine number of pressure-venting cycles and nitrogen
requirement for pressure purging to achieved required inert O2 concentration

1. Choose or calculate inert O2 concentration required (vol %).

2. Calculate number of cycles (pressure-venting) based on initial & inert

(final) oxygen concentration, initial system pressure and chosen nitrogen
pressure.

3. Calculate quantity of nitrogen per cycle to determine total nitrogen

required.

Step 1. Choose or calculate inert O2 concentration required

(vol%)
The first stage is to determine what level of O2 is acceptable within the system for the
hydrocarbons being introduced. As a rule of thumb 9 vol% oxygen is below the Minimum
Oxygen Concentration (MOC) vol% required for complete combustion of hydrocarbons,
whilst 6 vol% is still sufficient for incomplete combustion. As such most systems are
assumed to be safe at approximately 4 5 vol% O2.

If the required inert O2 concentration is not known, then the MOC for the hydrocarbon stream
must be calculated. A value below the MOC is then selected as the inert O2 concentration.
The minimum oxygen concentration required by a gas can be calculated from the equation:

Lower Flammability Limit for most hydrocarbon gases can be obtained in literature.
Flammability data for some more common gases is provided here

Example 2 Calculate the MOC for a HC mixture; 60 vol% CH4, 30 vol% C2H6 and 10
vol% C3H8.

Assume complete combustion 0.6CH4 + 0.3C2H6 + 0.1C3H8 + 2.75O2 > 1.5CO2 + 2.5H2O

Note: Volume fractions ratio of 6:3:1 is equal to mole fractions ratio of 6:3:1 on ideal gas
molar volume basis

Methane LFL 4.5%vol in Air, Ethane LFL 3%vol in Air, Propane LFL 2.15%vol in Air

Step 2. Calculate number of cycles required to achieve

chosen oxygen concentration
It can be proved analytically that the number of cycles (n) is related to the initial and final
oxygen mole fractions (yo and yn) and the initial (LOW) and HIGH pressure used for purging
by the equation
Note: The above relationship assumes pure nitrogen is used for inerting. It should also be noted that the number
of cycles is independent of the vessel volume. As such a 2m3 vessel will require the same number of cycles as a
50m3 vessel.

Example 3 Calculate the number of cycles required to inert an atmospheric vessel

down to 2%vol O2, using a Nitrogen pressure of 2.27barg

An atmospheric vessel will be at PL = 1.01325bara and yo = 0.21; based on Air of 79% N2 and
21% O2.

with yn = 0.02 and PH = 3.283bara,

From a design point of view, nitrogen pressure (e.g 2.27barg) can always be chosen to ensure
that number of cycle is a whole number, such as 2, 3, 4 etc. If nitrogen pressure is
constrained and number of cycle is not a whole number then cycles should be rounded up to
the next whole number, such as a 1.4 cycles should be designed as 2 cycles.

Step 3. Calculate quantity of nitrogen required to achieve

chosen oxygen concentration
To determine the total amount of nitrogen required, the nitrogen per cycle needs to be
calculated. Total nitrogen is then calculated as the number of cycles multiplied by
nitrogen/cycle.

Example 4 Calculate the total quantity of nitrogen in Nm3/hr required to achieve the
inert atmosphere in example 3 for a vessel and associated piping of 15m3 at 25C and
Nitrogen temperature of 37C

One approach that has been used to calculate the quantity of nitrogen is to determine the
quantity per cycle as
However, this approach is only a good estimation when the system and nitrogen temperature
are equal but not equal to zero degrees Celsius (given that Normal gas volume is defined at
1.01325bara & 0C) and is even less accurate when the nitrogen temperature is not equal to
the temperature of the system to be inerted.

A more accurate approach will be to apply a material & energy balance to determine the
number of moles of nitrogen required to achieve the required pressure in the vessel.

To determine the quantity of nitrogen more accurately, use the following steps

Step 3.1 Calculate the number of kmols in the vessel and

piping system at initial conditions
Using PV = nRT

Step 3.2 Iteratively determine the mixture temperature and

number of moles in the vessel at high pressure of 3.283 bara
This step involves calculating the number of kmols in the vessel at the high pressure end of
the cycle. However, as the equation is dependent on temperature in the system at the high
pressure and this final temperature is not known due to difference in Nitrogen and system
pressure, the calculation becomes iterative.

The basis of the iteration is to

3.2.1 Guess a value for final temperature

3.2.2 Calculate number of kmols in vessel based on high pressure and (guessed) final
temperature

3.2.3 Determine number of kmols N2 introduced into system (kmols in 3.2.2 initial kmols)
3.2.4 Check energy balance heat gained by initial kmols in system (0.61314 kmols) = heat
lost by kmols of N2 introduced.

3.2.5 If energy balance in 3.2.4 is satisfied, then correct value of temperature and N2 kmols is
obtained. If not, repeat steps 3.2.1 to 3.2.4 with new value of temperature.

3.2.6 Calculate Nm3 of N2 using Normal molar gas volume of 22.4 Nm3/kmol. The
calculation can be set up in excel and solved for temperature using goal seek. An iteration
table is also showed below for the case being considered here:

Data: N2 : Cp = 1.04 kJ/kg & RMM = 28kg/kmol, Air: Cp= 1.006

kJ/kg K & RMM = 28.96 kg/kmol

Guess T kmols @ Heat gained Heat lost by Energy

kmols of N2
(C) 3.283bara by Air (kJ) N2 (kJ) balance (kJ)

31.00 1.9474 1.3343 107.18 233.13 125.95

34.00 1.9284 1.3153 160.77 114.90 -45.86

32.50 1.9379 1.3247 133.97 173.59 39.62

33.25 1.9331 1.3200 147.37 144.14 -3.23

33.19 1.9335 1.3204 146.30 146.49 0.19

Using the last line of data at temperature of 33.19C each calculation step from 3.2.2 to 3.2.6
is detailed below
Compare the 59.16Nm3 to the nitrogen value of 68.10Nm3 determined from the first
approximate method in this example, there is a conservative 15% over estimation.

This approach thus provides an accurate way of determining the nitrogen requirement for
pressure purging.