Accurately Calculate Nitrogen Requirement for Pressure

Purging
Filed in Technical Papers 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:

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Accurately Calculate Nitrogen Requirement for Pressure

Purging
Flammability data for some more common gases is provided below
Flammability Limits of Some Common Hydrocarbons

Compound

LFL
UFL
%vol in Air %vol in Air

Compound

LFL
UFL
%vol in Air %vol in Air

Benzene

1.2

7.8

Ethane

12

Butane, n-Butane

1.6

8.4

Ethanol

19

n-Butanol

1.4

11.2

Ethylbenzene

1.0

7.1

Carbon Monoxide

12

75

Ethylene

2.7

36

Cyclobutane

1.8

11.1

Gasoline

1.4

7.6

Cyclohexane

1.3

7.7

n-Heptane

1.05

6.7

Cyclohexanol

n-Hexane

1.1

7.5

Cyclohexanone

9.5

Isobutane

1.8

9.6

Cyclopentane

1.5

9.5

Kerosene Jet Fuel

0.7

4.9

Cyclopropane

2.4

10.4

Methane (Natural Gas)

4. 5

15

Decane

0.8

5.4

Naphthalene

0.9

5.9

Diesel

0.6

7.5

Octane

Diethanolamine

13

iso-Octane

0.79

5.94

Diethylamine

1.8

10.1

Pentane

1.5

7.8

Toluene

1.2

6.75

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Accurately Calculate Nitrogen Requirement for Pressure

Purging
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.

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Accurately Calculate Nitrogen Requirement for Pressure

Purging
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)

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Accurately Calculate Nitrogen Requirement for Pressure

Purging
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 (C) kmols @ kmols of N2
3.283bara

Heat gained Heat lost by N2

by Air (kJ)
(kJ)

Energy
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.

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