Oxygen is essential for most forms of combustion, including industrial processes like metal melting and cutting that require extremely high temperatures. While air contains oxygen, enriching that air supply with additional pure oxygen can dramatically improve combustion efficiency in furnaces and cutters. This allows manufacturers to increase productivity, reduce energy use, lower emissions, and improve end product quality.

Improving Energy Efficiency

In industrial furnaces, injecting extra oxygen enables operators to achieve higher temperatures for melting refractory metals like steel, iron, and aluminum. Combustion using air alone reaches a theoretical maximum temperature around 2800°F. However, enriching the air with 25-50% oxygen can reach temperatures of 3000-4000°F. This supercharged combustion melts metals faster while using less fuel. Furnaces also run cleaner without nitrogen from air diluting the exhaust stream.

Furnace reheating and heat-treating

Supplemental oxygen also benefits reheating and heat-treating furnaces in hot mills. Blowing oxygen at nozzles in the furnace boosts combustion to evenly heat metals like aluminum faster. This increases throughput allowing smelters to meet higher production demands. More uniform heating from oxygen enrichment also ensures consistent metallurgical properties throughout the metal for quality parts manufacturing. 

Forging operations similarly utilize oxygen injection to reach the high temperatures needed to shape and form heated metals. Oxygen-enhanced burners help forge presses rapidly achieve uniform heating to near 2300°F. The compressed oxygen stream penetrates and surrounds the workpiece for faster, more efficient heating cycles. This allows the forge to shape more parts per hour meeting tight production schedules.

Enabling Sustainable Metal Cutting

Likewise, oxygen enables cutting thick ferrous plates precisely and rapidly during fabrication. Steel mills utilize high-pressure oxygen gas combined with combustion fuels to form focused exothermic cutting torches. Blowing pure oxygen through the torch tip allows it to “burn” through steel up to 12 inches thick at speeds up to 10 times faster than air-fuel torches. This high-temperature cutting remains extremely localized preventing damage to surrounding metal.  

Combining oxygen and fuel gases in an exothermic reaction also powers non-ferrous metal cutting tables. These offer controlled cutting for thinner aluminum and stainless-steel alloy plates. Adjusting the oxygen pressure and flowrate provides optimal flame shape and temperature to match the metal properties. This precision cutting forms shapes for parts with minimal warping at fast speeds.

On-Site Oxygen Generation

For industries like aerospace and appliances manufacturing pieces from formed metal plates, access to onsite oxygen generation is essential for production scales. Rather than relying on delivered tanks, an oxygen generator can sustainably supply the volumes these operations require. Generators using pressure swing adsorption (PSA) extract oxygen from ambient air through specialized sieves. PSA oxygen is extremely pure meeting mandatory standards for combustion and cutting use. With the right capacity oxygen generation system, manufacturers enjoy reliability, purity, and cost savings.

Ready to FORGE FORWARD in Sustainable Metal Production?

For metal producers seeking to improve sustainability and productivity, the oxygen solutions from nexAir provide a competitive edge. nexAir offers industrial oxygen generation systems, pure industrial grade oxygen packages, and innovative metal cutting tools optimized for oxygen use.

With nexAir’s industrial oxygen and cutting-edge tools, metal companies can complete more parts per hour with excellent quality while decreasing their environmental footprint. By upgrading to nexAir’s oxygen-enhanced equipment, metal producers can lead in productivity and sustainability.