“A dream. It’s perfect”: Helium discovery in northern Minnesota may be biggest ever in North America::For a century, the U.S. Government-owned the largest helium reserve in the country, but the biggest exporters now are in Russia, Qatar and Tanzania. With this new discovery, Minnesota could be joining that list.
Hopefully we stop wasting this limited resource on fucking balloons.
Edit: well this kicked off a fun and respectful conversation. The information I can find from actual scientists says wasting helium on balloons is bad. The balloon lobby says it is just a waste byproduct. The balloon lobby brings nothing of value to the world in terms of plastic or helium use, so I’m going to go with the science opinion on this one.
Hopefully we stop wasting this limited resource on fucking balloons.
I don’t recommend fucking balloons. The squeaks are annoying and the pops hurt.
The helium used for balloons is not the same type of helium used in medical and scientific equipment.
Wdym? The only difference is the helium gas used in more serious applications is more pure. Its helium all the same.
helium just boils off in MRI/NMR machines, this is the major use of helium i think. if you could recycle that in machines that already are out there, that would solve lots of problems. there are newer systems that do not require cryogens or just require liquid nitrogen which is much cheaper and less energy intensive. these things use closed loop refrigeration, but in turn you need to supply them with power
Sounds like superconductor research could end up fixing that problem. Once we have a suitable conductor material, you no longer need to keep it that cool.
The helium used for balloons is of low purity.
The shortages you hear about are of pure or near pure helium. The stuff going into the balloons at Tommy’s birthday party isn’t the same thing used to cool superconductors.
EDIT: And I used to think Reddit was full of ignorant jackasses …
What the fuck are you on about? Helium is an element. Doesn’t matter if it’s low purity it’s wasted and then gone. When the high purity stuff is gone we can’t be like “thank god we can purify the low wall quality stuff” when that’s gone too
It isn’t exactly wasted. Like you said, it’s an element. Short of any nuclear reactions, it won’t be destroyed (plus I’m not entirely clear if any useful reactions actually consume helium).
Helium in balloons is returning to the atmosphere. We can re harvest it if we want. While that sounds wasteful, it might actually be more efficient than trying to purify lower grade helium.
I’ll put it this way. If the helium in balloons could be easily purified to what they need for industrial uses, we wouldn’t be using helium in balloons. Purification industry would drive the price of it sky high.
EDIT: Ignore most of this, I didn’t do my due research.
Balloon helium is 3% helium. So every 33 balloons is one Balloon worth of pure helium. No helium starts off pure. It all gets concentrated/separated to get that way. “Balloon grade” helium can be concentrated just fine and considering that thousands of those balloons are filled every day, it is a lot of wasted helium.
*I had my percentage swapped, it seems. Balloon helium is 97% helium.
Last time I bought what I thought was a pure balloon of He, I’m pretty sure it had gotten cut with fentanyl.
This is like saying gold nuggets are worthless because people want refined products made of gold…
It’s fucking helium bro, it’s easy to separate it from anything else. Because it’s the lightest noble gas…
Fill a balloon with 10% helium and 90% atmosphere, and the top 10% of the balloon is pure helium.
That’s how easy it is to sepeeate it.
it’s much more complicated than that, and the most useful property of helium is its low boiling point. it goes like this:
first, you start with natural gas that has some nitrogen, some water, some helium, some carbon dioxide, heavier hydrocarbons, thiols, dust, and such. mechanical filtering gets rid of dust and mist, water, carbon dioxide and thiols are removed chemically, heavier hydrocarbons are removed on active carbon. now we have mix of methane, ethane, hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, traces of carbon monoxide, dioxide and water. this all is cooled down, first just to freeze out these trace amounts of water and carbon dioxide, then to liquefy what is left.
next this liquid mixture is put through massive distillation tower, allowing for separation of mainly nitrogen and methane. this nitrogen and methane are end products, some are sold as liquids but most are regasified in order to cool down incoming gas and save some energy. another product is helium concentrate, at this point it can be 50% to 80% with rest being nitrogen but this depends on exact facility.
then, some extra air is added to helium concentrate, it’s heated up and passed over catalyst bed. this is done in order to burn out hydrogen and any hydrocarbons, because separating oxygen from helium is much easier than separating hydrogen from helium. products of this burn are water and carbon dioxide that can be separated chemically. then again it’s all cooled down, nitrogen and oxygen are liquefied, then it’s all cooled down further and from some 30K on it’s just helium being circulated as gas because you can’t liquefy it like any other gases, it needs a special process. on every pass, with extensive recycling of heat some part of it is liquified and this is the final output, 5N liquid helium.
at least that’s how it works in a facility built in 70s in then eastern block. now it supplies half of europe and a research facility situated nearby. i suspect it was built with at least some military applications in mind during this time, namely helium is used for pressurizing hydrogen tanks of rockets, but also soviets toyed with an idea of using gas lasers militarily. this requires a supply of helium, and a supply of neon is also a nice thing to have in this situation. neon was produced in Azovstal cryogenic oxygen factory serving nearby steelworks, as it can be separated from air. it ended up providing virtually all neon for semiconductor manufacturing in the world, but from what i understand there are alternative suppliers by now
It’s a gas. It’s effectively defined by the fact that the individual particles have too much energy to settle like that.
Separating a lot of liquids has similar issues though.
You’re incorrect, but at least you’re incorrect confidently, I guess.
Here’s a link where a helium extractor explains the process:
https://rockymountainair.com/blog/how-is-helium-extracted/
It’s a lot more complicated than “let it sit in a tank, bro. Trust me, bro”.
Using it for balloons is still a waste because that impure helium could be purified for better uses.
No, no it could not.
The stuff used in balloons isn’t pure enough to be used for cryogenic purposes, which is what people really want it for.
And before you ask purifying it is really difficult.
wdym by “low purity” helium, helium that has been purified cryogenically is easily 99.999% if not better, and this is the main process used worldwide iirc
The highest grade helium is grade 6, grade 4.7 gets used for cryogenic purposes. Balloon helium is grade 4.
Tommy’s dad didn’t steal grade 6 helium from a research lab for kid’s birthday party.
Here’s a link to a gas supplier’s website with a chart: https://www.westairgases.com/blog/exploring-the-most-essential-and-underappreciated-uses-for-helium
I think for balloons we should switch back to hydrogen. What could possibly go wrong?
Probably not much. The hydrogen that a party balloon would contain could certainly make a small, exciting explosion, but it probably wouldn’t have enough energy to set anything else on fire.
It’s a common high school chem lab demonstration. Without added oxygen, the H2 balloons sort of burn from the outside in, and you get a sort of slow burning mushroom plume. It could light paper or cloth on fire in close proximity.
With added oxygen… BLAM! It could shatter windows.
You willing to risk your house, life, and the lives of your children in that?
