Nitrogen Generators for Electronics Manufacturing
Nitrogen runs through an electronics plant in more places than the soldering line. Reflow, wave and selective soldering need an inert atmosphere at temperature, cable extrusion and curing need one for hours at a time, and assembly, test and dry storage draw gas around the clock. NITROBERG® produces it from compressed air on your own site, at grades from 97 % up to 99.999 %.
What nitrogen does in electronics manufacturing
Nitrogen is not one requirement in an electronics plant, it is several, and they rarely arrive together. A soldering line needs an inert atmosphere at temperature. A curing or extrusion line needs one without interruption. Assembly, test and dry storage need a clean, dry purge gas at low flow but without gaps.
What connects them is oxygen. At process temperature it attacks molten solder, polymer melts and bare metal surfaces within seconds, and the damage shows up later as a weak joint, a void or a discoloured surface. Nitrogen does not react, so it displaces the oxygen and leaves the process chemistry to do its work.
A PSA generator makes that gas from compressed air. The air passes through a bed of carbon molecular sieve, which takes up oxygen, carbon dioxide and residual moisture far faster than it takes up nitrogen; a second bed regenerates at lower pressure while the first one produces, so output stays continuous. The PSA nitrogen generator page covers the process, and the carbon molecular sieve article explains why the sieve decides what the machine can reach.
Nitrogen soldering: reflow, wave and selective
Soldering under nitrogen is where most electronics plants start, and the three variants behave differently.
In reflow soldering the tunnel is flooded, and the oven draws gas for as long as it is hot, between boards as well as during them. The inert atmosphere improves wetting and spread, reduces the oxide skin on the molten solder, and widens the process window for low-residue no-clean fluxes, which carry little activator and lean on the atmosphere instead. On lead-free alloys and on fine-pitch or bottom-terminated components that is often what separates a stable yield from a marginal one.
In wave soldering the effect sits mostly in the pot. An inerted pot and wave form far less dross, which is the largest single source of solder loss and pot maintenance on a wave line, and hole fill and bridging improve with it. Selective soldering uses the least gas of the three: nitrogen at the nozzle keeps it wetted and free of oxide, which holds joint quality steady across a shift.
One number decides the specification, and it is residual oxygen. Process targets are stated as an oxygen concentration in the atmosphere, and the oxygen in your supply counts towards that budget. A 99.9 % supply carries 1,000 ppm and cannot hold a 500 ppm atmosphere at all, whatever the oven does. Set the generator grade above the target, then confirm it against the equipment specification.
Nitrogen in cable production
Cable plants use nitrogen differently from assembly lines: less in ppm terms, far more in hours.
The largest use is curing. In continuous vulcanisation lines for peroxide crosslinked XLPE insulation, holding the tube under nitrogen instead of saturated steam keeps water out of the insulation, so the microvoids that steam curing leaves behind do not form and the finished core withstands more. Extrusion and compounding use nitrogen to blanket hoppers, dryers and melt streams so that oxidation sensitive compounds do not degrade before they reach the die, and optical fibre lines use it as the shielding atmosphere where the primary coating is applied and cured.
Two things follow for sizing. The load is continuous rather than peaky, which is the profile where on-site generation is worth the most against delivered gas, because nothing is rented through the quiet hours and nothing evaporates overnight. And an interruption does not stop a machine, it scraps whatever is in the line, so buffer size and reserve strategy belong in the design rather than in the commissioning report.
How to size a nitrogen generator for an electronics plant
Separate the continuous loads from the intermittent ones
A reflow oven draws whenever it is hot, not only when boards are running. A curing or extrusion line draws flat around the clock. Selective soldering and dry storage draw little and in bursts. Build the base load from the continuous consumers first, then put the rest on top.
Set the purity from the atmosphere you have to hold
Residual oxygen in the supply adds to the oxygen in the process, so the generator grade sits above the concentration your process specifies. Take the most demanding process on the list, then confirm it against the specification of the equipment itself rather than against a rule of thumb.
Decide on demand or from storage
Filling a buffer while the plant is quiet lets both generator and compressor be smaller, because start-up peaks come out of storage instead of out of the machine. Round-the-clock duty removes that quiet period and points the other way. The decision changes the size before any model is chosen.
Check what that means for compressed air
Multiply your nitrogen flow by the air factor for the grade you chose: 3.4 at 99.9 %, 4.6 at 99.99 %, 6.4 at 99.999 %. Quality counts as much as quantity, because oil carry-over and residual moisture shorten sieve life. NITROBERG expects compressed air to ISO 8573-1:2010 Class 1.4.1 at 7 bar(g).
Need sizing for your application?
You do not need a full data set to start. Tell us roughly what you use today and we will say whether on-site generation is worth a closer look for your operation. If you already have flow, purity and operating hours to hand, send them and you get a sizing proposal back.
Nitrogen for semiconductor manufacturing: where PSA fits
Semiconductor sites ask this question more precisely than most, so it is worth answering it plainly.
Back-end operations sit squarely within reach of a PSA generator. Die attach, wire bonding, moulding and package reflow all need an inert atmosphere at temperature, in the same range as board-level soldering. So do nitrogen dry storage cabinets for moisture sensitive devices, purge on equipment enclosures and load locks, blanketing on chemical storage, and the general utility nitrogen an assembly and test line consumes. At 99.999 % a PSA generator delivers 10 ppm residual oxygen, which covers all of it.
Front-end wafer fabrication is a different specification. Process nitrogen there is ultra high purity, with oxygen and moisture measured in parts per billion, and it comes from cryogenic air separation rather than from pressure swing adsorption. No PSA generator reaches it, ours included. The useful conversation is therefore about which duties on your site genuinely need fab-grade gas and which do not, because assembly, test, packaging and storage usually do not.
Why electronics plants generate nitrogen on site
Purity you configure
The generator is set to the grade your process needs, anywhere from 97 % to 99.999 %. That single setting decides the compressed air behind it, which is where the running cost actually sits.
Standard wear parts
Filters and consumables are off-the-shelf items from the open market. There is no proprietary parts programme waiting after the purchase, and it is worth asking every supplier you compare where their filters come from.
Supply on your production plan
The gas is made where it is used, and a buffer vessel covers short interruptions. Cylinder changeovers and delivery windows drop out of a schedule that runs through the night.
Direct access to engineering
Sizing questions go to the people who design the machines, not to a call centre. Delivery, commissioning and service come from one source within the BERG Group. Warranty runs three years as standard and up to five years with a service contract.
On-site nitrogen compared with cylinders and liquid supply
Cylinder bundles look cheap because the cost is spread out. Rental runs whether the gas is used or not, delivery is charged per drop, contracts carry price escalation clauses, and full and empty bundles both need floor space and a handling route through a building where neither is free. The changeover also tends to fall in the middle of a shift. A liquid nitrogen tank solves flow and purity, but the meter runs regardless: evaporation continues overnight and at weekends, and a delivery schedule you do not control decides when the tank is full.
On-site generation replaces both with an investment and an electricity bill you can put in the hourly rate. For many of the plants we have supplied, the payback against liquid-gas supply has fallen within two to three years. Whether it does for you depends on your consumption profile and your electricity price, so that calculation is worth running together rather than taking a rule of thumb. One point belongs in that calculation from the start: a higher purity multiplies the compressed air you need, so if your existing network is already close to its limit, a compressor and a dryer can become part of the project rather than an afterthought.
The NITROBERG range runs from 1.2 to 1,709.1 Nm³/h, so the same technology covers a single selective soldering cell and a cable plant. Where a site has no suitable compressed air network, the nitrogen generation package combines generator, air generation, treatment, storage and control in one pre-assembled unit, in plug-and-play configurations for NITROBERG 500 to 900. Applicable NITROBERG pressure equipment is conformity assessed under PED 2014/68/EU within the certified scope. Engineering and manufacturing are Made in Germany.
FAQ: nitrogen generators for electronics and soldering
That follows from the residual oxygen your process has to hold, and the supply grade has to sit above it. The oxygen in the gas you feed counts towards the atmosphere in the oven: 99.9 % carries 1,000 ppm, 99.99 % carries 100 ppm, 99.999 % carries 10 ppm. NITROBERG® generators are configured anywhere in that range, so the grade is a sizing decision rather than a fixed property of the machine. Confirm the target against the specification of the oven or the selective unit you run.
In reflow it improves wetting and spread, reduces the oxide skin on molten solder, and widens the process window for low-residue no-clean fluxes, which carry little activator and depend on the atmosphere instead. That weighs most on lead-free alloys and on fine-pitch or bottom-terminated components. In wave soldering the main effect is dross: an inerted pot and wave form far less of it, which cuts solder loss and pot maintenance, and hole fill and bridging improve alongside.
Take the figure from the oven manufacturer rather than from a rule of thumb, because consumption follows tunnel length, the size of the entry and exit apertures and the design of the gas curtains, not the number of boards you run. What matters for sizing is that the draw is continuous while the oven is hot, idle periods between batches included, so it belongs in the base load and not in the peak.
Usually yes, and in a plant with soldering, curing and dry storage it is the normal arrangement. Two conditions decide it. A generator runs at one grade, so the most demanding process sets the purity and every other consumer runs at that grade and pays the compressed air for it. And the capacity has to cover the consumers that genuinely run at the same time, plus headroom for the next line. Where one process needs a far higher grade than the rest, a separate supply for it is often cheaper than lifting everything.
For assembly, test and packaging, yes. Die attach, wire bonding, moulding, package reflow, nitrogen dry storage, equipment and load lock purge and general utility nitrogen all sit within the range a PSA generator delivers, and 99.999 % corresponds to 10 ppm residual oxygen. Front-end wafer fabrication is a different specification: process nitrogen there is ultra high purity with oxygen and moisture in parts per billion, and that comes from cryogenic air separation, not from PSA.
Curing is the largest use. In continuous vulcanisation lines for peroxide crosslinked XLPE insulation, holding the tube under nitrogen instead of saturated steam keeps water out of the insulation, so the microvoids left by steam curing do not form. Beyond that, nitrogen blankets hoppers, dryers and melt streams in extrusion and compounding so that oxidation sensitive compounds do not degrade before the die, and it shields optical fibre coatings while they are applied and cured.
The nitrogen vessel holds a buffer, which covers short interruptions and gives you time to react. How much buffer is worth installing depends on what an interruption costs: a soldering line can usually be held, while a continuous curing or extrusion line scraps what is inside it. Buffer size and the reserve strategy are therefore defined together with the system design and the requirements that apply at your site.