Advantages medical, and special gases

Gases are widely used in all industry sectors, from food to automotive, from the steel industry to water treatment. Alongside technical gases, so-called special gases are operated by a wide range of industrial sectors as processing intermediates.

Medical Gas Hoses (including oxygen and nitrous oxide) are used by the hospital and home care sectors for therapeutic and diagnostic use.

Industrial Gas aimed at containing costs and the need for research and development centres that allow the identification of new technological applications. Industrial Gas Pipe Fittings require the presence of conspicuous investments, which are difficult to face by small businesses. On the other hand, several companies operate locally with small production facilities or through product filling and sales activities (so-called secondary production).

Technical and medicinal gas production often flows into the same company, although in dedicated divisions. Still, there are also cases in which, with the development of the medicinal sector, the companies producing technical gases have set up new ad hoc companies to be able to follow from close to the peculiarities of this sector. It involves an in-depth study of more typical issues in the pharmaceutical industry. However, a strong technical and engineering value continues to prevail in the areas of production and distribution.

The reference market is national since trade with foreign countries is numerically irrelevant. Due to the high incidence of transport costs, gases need to be produced near the places of final use and, precisely for this reason, the economic trend of the sector fairly closely follows the state of health of Italian manufacturing.

 Types of processes/products

The main production phase is that linked to the air separation process. The air is separated by distillation into its main components (nitrogen, oxygen, and argon) through a very expensive and technologically sophisticated process, especially in energy.

In addition to three gases extracted from the air, the companies in the sector also produce other gases such as acetylene (C 2 H 2), sulphur dioxide (SO 2), carbon dioxide (CO 2), chlorine (CI 2), helium (He), rare gases, hydrogen (H 2), gas mixtures, and oxygen (O 2), nitrous oxide (N 2 O).

Among these, hydrogen is usually produced through a methane steam reforming process, while nitrous oxide is produced by a strictly chemical process, starting from ammonium nitrate. Carbon dioxide, as well as recovered from chemical combustion processes, can be extracted from natural wells.

Industrial gases are stored and supplied, depending on the characteristics of use and the quantities required, in the gaseous phase (in the cylinder or pipeline) or the liquid phase and with different degrees of purity.

The Medical Gas Manifolds in the sector propose themselves as partners of their customers in the search for technological and service solutions. Medical Gases are capable of guaranteeing advantages such as greater productivity, operational safety, and respect for the environment, product quality, and optimization of production resources.

In this sense, the development of Medical Gas Outlets for existing products and customer service are particularly important.