The Industry

The industrial gases businesses is briefly described in the above sections for those visitors to this website who are not familiar with the industry.

Definition

The industrial gas industry produces and distributes a variety of gases in various supply modes. Production can be either through the on-purpose production of gases (e.g. fractionation of air, production of carbon dioxide and hydrogen from fuel, production of nitrous oxide) or by recovery from by-product gas streams (e.g. helium, carbon dioxide, argon).

These gases are supplied to end use industries in a variety of supply modes - including on-site supply schemes, pipeline systems, bulk liquid tankers, high pressure tube-trailers, small liquid cylinders or as compressed gas in high pressure cylinders.

The Gases

These include:

Oxygen	Nitrogen	Argon	Hydrogen	Helium
Carbon Dioxide	Acetylene	Nitrous Oxide	Rare Gases (xenon, krypton, neon)	Welding Gases
Electronic Gases	Medical Gases	Speciality Gases	Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG)

Equipment

There is a large industry involved in the support of the production and distribution of gases as well as in the technology used in applications of the gases.

Examples of production equipment include air separation units or plants (ASUs), cold boxes, heat exchangers, turbo expanders, cryogenic pumps, molecular sieves.

Distribution equipment includes cryogenic storage tanks, cryogenic flow meters, cryogenic pumps, cryogenic liquid tankers, iso-containers, high pressure cylinders (aluminium or steel), liquid cylinders, valves and regulators.

Applications and equipment can include oxy-fuel burners, cryogenic freezing tunnels, atmospheric control equipment (e.g. food packaging), waste-water treatment plants, pulp bleaching processes etc.

End-Use Industries

The major industries include: iron & steel, petrochemicals, refining, chemicals, glass, electronics, food processing, metal fabrication, pulp & paper, space and medical.

Size Of Industry

We estimate that the global gases business reached US$41 bn in 2003 - defined as the value of gas sales and services supplied to the end-use industries. There are 7 major industrial gas companies which include: Air Liquide, Air Products, BOC, Linde, Taiyo Nippon Sanso, Airgas and Praxair but there are thousands of smaller gas producers and distributors of gas.

If equipment sales were also taken into account we believe that the industrial gases business would increase to over US$55 bn.

Global gases business reaches $54bn
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