Das Projekt "Energy saving in producing process gases for steel manufacturing" wird vom Umweltbundesamt gefördert und von Klöckner Stahl, Hütte Bremen durchgeführt. Objective: To demonstrate that an economic energy saving of about 18x10 6 kWh electricity/year (5400 toe) can be achieved by reducing oxygen losses. General Information: New air separation technology will be integrated in an existing plant. This modernized plant is equipped with adequate storage and control facilities. A changeable storage system, which adopts itself automatically to the actual oxygen gas consumption, allows to store temporarily otherwise blown off amounts of oxygen as a liquid. In times of high demand additional liquid oxygen from the storage will be injected into the rectification column, thus increasing the amount of oxygen produced. An adequate amount of liquid nitrogen will be stored in a tank at the same time. When again surplus oxygen has to be stored, the nitrogen will be injected into the column to keep the air separation process in balance. The modernized plant largely utilizes the existing machinery of the old plants, in order to optimize the economical situation. Innovative aspects: The combination of existing components with new technology, e.g. the new changeable storage system, control system, molsieve.