Specialty Gas Blending: Users and Considerations
Companies that use specialty gases cover a variety of industries – welding, food packaging, laser applications, university lab testing, and more. Rocky Mountain Air has gas blends tailored for your needs and industry. If you need a specific purity level, we can provide the correct mixture, assuring you the quality you need for any process. A few examples of the primary applications we provide specialty gas blending for include:
1. Medical: We provide the full spectrum of medical gases needed, including therapy gas, diagnostic gas, anesthetics, laser mixes, lung infusion mixes, and breathing air mixes.
2. Welding and Cutting: We provide all the mixtures needed to ensure the protection of the weld whether it is flux core arc, metal arc, tungsten arc, or plasma arc welding. We also have both oxy-fuel gases and plasma arc gases for your cutting applications.
3. Food and Beverage Preparation: We provide a complete line of Modified Atmospheric Packaging (MAP) for the preservation of fresh produce. We can provide the gas needed for sparging and brewing applications as well as for blanketing and purging after packaging for protection against oxidation.
Certification is important to each of these specialty gas users because the presence of any impurities could cause an entire system to malfunction. Different specialty gas users require different mixture grades and blend panels that meet the standards of their specific industry, making it important that we have the correct details to provide the blend you need.
The Difference Between Specialty and Industrial Gases
A specialty gas is a blend of any two or more gases prepared by a lab technician in concordance with a customer’s recommendation. These gas blends require mixing based on specific calibration standards, lab analysis, and certification of the precise composition of contents. Certification includes a testing of analysis, compliance, and conformance by a certified lab technician. Due to the complex chemistry and nature of testing, it often takes weeks for specialty gases to be produced. For this reason, specialty gases are manufactured in small quantities, while industrial gases may be ordered for bulk use.
Industrial gas compositions are simple, and usually singular. Think of your typical breathing gases, but separated: oxygen, nitrogen, helium, etc. Industrial gases do not require the same high level of purity that specialty gases do.
Questions to Ask When Blending Specialty Gases
There are many more checklist items to vet when blending specialty gases. Each lab technician must ask questions upon blending and analyzing specialty gas mixtures, such as:
– What are the blend tolerances?
– What are the component gases?
– What is the mixture composition?
– What is the mixture grade?
– Which type of cylinder does the specialty gas need to be packaged in?
– Are there any impurities?
– Does this cylinder require special certification based on the industry using it?
– What is the analytical accuracy of the mixture?
– Are the gases reactive, inert, toxic, oxidizing, flammable, or corrosive?
A precise knowledge of the chemistry of atmospheric gases goes into the blending of specialty gases, all which highly trained PurityPlus specialty gas technicians will be well informed. Certifications of analysis, compliance, and conformance will answer each of these questions, ensuring that each cylinder will optimize the performance of each application that the specialty gas blend is set to perform. Analytical instrumentation such as gas chromatography, infrared, process, and mass analyzers provide clear results regarding the purity of each composition. Having each of these questions answered achieves the purpose of peace of mind for each packaged gas requested by the customer. Using PurityPlus certified vendors offers quality control and the highest levels of product certification. Simply ask your gas supplier or look for the logo.
Specialty Gas Blending in the Rocky Mountain Region
Rocky Mountain Air has chosen PurityPlus it as a priority partner for its Salt Lake City fill plant. Rocky Mountain Air has locations in Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nebraska, and surrounding areas, but we can ship to many other areas in the western part of the nation. In fact, RMA is the only PurityPlus provider in each of these states (with the exception of Wyoming). This partnership provides the perfect mixture of any certified specialty gas your business may need, along with local customer service, on-time delivery, customizable solutions and better yet – peace of mind.
Contact your local Rocky Mountain Air branch today for any questions regarding specialty gas blending. We look forward to serving you in your specialty gas applications!
