Discovered early in the twentieth century, argon was one of the first rare gases to find commercial application. Making up slightly less than one percent of air, argon is best known for the properties it lacks—color, odor, and taste—and for its total inertness—it is noncorrosive, nonflammable, and nontoxic.
It is argon’s inert properties that make it useful in a wide range of industrial gas applications from the modified atmosphere packaging of foods to heavy manufacturing processes like welding, steel making, heat treating, and electronics manufacturing. By revenue, argon represents about 10 percent of the total US industrial gas market, valued at about 18.5 billion in 2011, and about two percent of the total air gases market by volume.
Argon is obtained from the ambient air in air separation plants and is a high value industrial gas. It is used in a pure state or in special mixtures as a process gas (shielding gas) primarily for welding. It is used in processes for standard materials but is also popular at the higher end of the quality spectrum, for welding materials such as stainless steel, aluminium, and titanium, and plays an important role in gas-shielded arc welding processes.
It is used in processes for standard materials but is also popular at the higher end of the quality spectrum, for welding materials such as stainless steel, aluminium, and titanium, and plays an important role in gas-shielded arc welding processes.
According to Linde Gases (www.linde gases.com), an international producer of industrial gases and a leading developer of applications for argon, argon not only acts as a shielding gas, protecting the workpiece against contact with the air, it also enables proper ionization in gas-shielded arc welding. Without argon, arc welding with state-of-theart robots, a process that is commonly used in automotive production, as well as most other gas-enabled arc welding process, manual or mechanized, would not be possible.
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