Air Liquide is supporting China's steel industry by expanding its largest oxygen production base in the country and establishing a key production site in China for krypton and xenon, which are in increasing demand in the electronics industry.

Air Liquide recently announced that it has signed a long-term industrial gases contract with Chinese steel company Jiangsu Shagang Group and will invest approximately €100 million to build China's largest air separation unit (ASU) in Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu Province.

There are currently two Air Liquide ASUs in operation in Zhangjiagang.

The capacity of the newly constructed ASU is known to be able to process 3,800 tons of oxygen per day, and when construction is completed in 2023, it will be able to process more than 8,000 tons of oxygen per day.

In particular, this ASU is expected to become a major production site for Xenon and Krypton, for which demand has been increasing recently.

Air Liquide produces most of its xenon and krypton at Sasol in South Africa, where it has a large oxygen ASU complex, and refines it in Paris, France, for sale to major demand countries.

In particular, demand for rare gases as materials for memory semiconductors is rapidly increasing in countries including Korea, China, and Japan, and recently, the prices of xenon and krypton have continued to rise to record levels.

Xenon and krypton are used in the etching process in semiconductor 3D NAND. 3D NAND is a 2D NAND circuit that is stacked in dozens of layers, and an etching process is needed to create a channel that connects each layer, and xenon and krypton are used as propellant gases to inject etching gas into the deep holes.

It is known that more than 76% of the world's krypton is used for semiconductors, and as a result, demand for krypton is rapidly increasing and its price is also continuously rising.

Large ASUs are essential for the production of xenon and krypton, but in recent years, due to the recession in the steel and shipbuilding industries, the number of large ASUs has decreased for economic reasons, and there has been no new expansion.

As a result, production of xenon and krypton remained the same, but demand surged, causing prices to continue to rise.

Here, xenon is used as a key fuel for space propulsion, and with the recent surge in private commercial space projects such as SpaceX and Blue Origin, the industry predicts that the price of xenon will also skyrocket.