Process and apparatus for the recovery of krypton and/or xenon

摘要

Krypton and/or xenon is separated crudely from an oxygen product comprising oxygen and at least one rare gas selected from the group consisting of krypton and xenon in a distillation process using a rare gas recovery system comprising a distillation system 16. The oxygen product 108 is produced in a cryogenic air separation process operating a pumped LOX cycle. The pressure of the oxygen product 108 is greater than the operating pressure of the part of the cryogenic ASU producing LOX and at least about 50 mol % of the oxygen product 108 is fed to the rare gas recovery system 16 in the gaseous phase. One advantage of a preferred embodiment of the present invention is that it can easily be retrofitted to existing pumped LOX cycle ASUs.