To remove oxygen, or for sensitive solutions or reactive molten metals, a chemically inert gas such as nitrogen, argon, or helium is used.
Solvents used in high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) are often sparged with helium.
[1] In biochemical engineering, sparging can remove low-boiling liquids from a solution.
In environmental chemistry, air sparging is an in situ remediation technique that removes volatile pollutants from contaminated groundwater and soil.
In metallurgy, gas flushing removes dissolved gases from the molten metal prior to the material being processed.