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The industrial gas industry has been undergoing consolidation for the past ten years and is now highly concentrated. In 2004, the following five companies dominated the industry worldwide—Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (United States); L’Air Liquide, S.A. (France); The BOC Group PLC (United Kingdom); Praxair, Inc. (United States) and Linde AG (Germany). Together, these companies supplied more than 60–70% of the $42–45 billion industrial gases business.
In recent years, companies have also been restructuring internally to improve efficiencies, moving away from a product line focus, and organizing along industry lines, such as steel, electronics and health care. This keeps the form of delivery transparent to the customer and allows a single point of contact for all gas needs.
An improving global economy brought about by growth in the United States and Asia led to strong performance in the industrial gas industry in 2004. Recovery started in late 2003, was strong until the end of 2004, and will continue in such sectors as electronics and health care during 2005. The industry saw increased revenues as well as mergers and acquisitions that refined approaches to smaller, profitable markets.
The major industrial gas companies have made substantial investments in regions outside of North America, Western Europe and Japan over the last five years. Investment was particularly high in China, where almost all the major industrial gas companies have formed joint ventures. The Chinese industrial gas market is expected to double in value in the next five years. India and the Republic of Korea are expected to double their consumption volume during this time.
Africa and the Middle East are of growing importance in the air separation gas market. The gas-to-liquid (GTL) process plants that are being constructed and planned there will consume significant quantities of oxygen in the near future.
The principal industrial gases are derived from air and occur in air in the following proportions—oxygen, 21%; nitrogen, 78%; and argon, 0.9%. Rare gases occurring in and recovered from air in much smaller quantities are krypton, neon and xenon. Carbon dioxide, helium and hydrogen are also present, but commercial quantities of these industrial gases are derived primarily from other sources. Minute amounts of other gases may also occur in variable impurities. For use as commercial commodities, oxygen, nitrogen and argon are produced primarily by the cryogenic fractionation of air.
The atmospheric industrial gases oxygen, nitrogen and argon are produced primarily from air in bulk quantities by the cryogenic distillation of air. This report is concerned primarily with gases from this source. Alternative production methods for oxygen, nitrogen and argon have become increasingly important in recent years as gases from alternative production methods have become economical under more and more circumstances. Of particular significance are noncryogenic processes based on membrane separation or adsorption, such as pressure swing adsorption (PSA), vacuum swing adsorption (VSA) and vacuum pressure swing adsorption (VPSA). These techniques are used for the production of nitrogen and oxygen.
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