Nitrogen Purity - Urgent

[cougarfan]

We are a batch chemical facility and purge and blanket with nitrogen. The nitrogen is generated with a nitorgen generator putting out a 99.5% purity with liquid nitrogen backup. Has anyone out there ventured to use a lower purity -say 98 % nitrogen.. We have a couple of proudcts that chemically will degrade so we will bring pure nitrogen to these tanks but we are looking at the safety aspects and it scares a lot of people to lower the purity.

 

[TD2K]

Are you concerned with potentially using 98% N2 and getting into an explosive mixture? The Bureau of Mines has publications (they've been talked about before on this site) for various gases and their LEL and UEL values in O2 enriched and deficient atmospheres.

Using this data, it's possible to draw the UEL/LEL envelope and then see with various N2 purities whether it's possible to get into the explosive region.