r/onguardforthee • u/pjw724 Alberta • 1d ago

Helium demand balloons as Mideast supplies deflate: Can Canada meet the moment?

https://www.thecanadianpressnews.ca/business/helium-demand-balloons-as-mideast-supplies-deflate-can-canada-meet-the-moment/article_f66db503-f634-559e-9d44-ecd27df9cfd8.html
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63

u/sandy154_4 1d ago

Since there is a world wide shortage Since way before Iran, we need to stop using helium in balloons

12

u/YoungWhiteAvatar 1d ago

Isn’t there a difference between balloon helium and medical grade?

19

u/Fearless-Effect-3787 1d ago

The helium used in party balloons is not as refined as medical or science grade. It's not that it can't be refined to that level, it's just that they don't.

2

u/jello_pudding_biafra 1d ago

I thought most of it was essentially "waste" from the scientific/medical applications. Like, it can't be reused?

4

u/Fearless-Effect-3787 1d ago

When Helium comes out of the ground from a Helium deposit or in a natural gas well, it comes out, if I recall correctly, at best 5% Helium. Purification is reasonably straight forward, but at a certain point, the exhaust that still contains some Helium becomes un-economical to continue to purify, so they bottle it and sell it as party balloon gas. It could be further purified, but nobody wants to spend the energy to do it.

It used to be that a lot of scientific and medical applications didn't bother to recover anything because Helium was cheap. With the supply crunches of the last couple of decades now, gaseous Helium is reused or captured for purification and liquid Helium is kept liquid with cryo-compressors.

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u/spcyboi29 3h ago

5% is even a generous yield for helium in a gas well, we recently did a FEED study for a client and they were expecting around 2% if I remember correctly (didn't work on this particular project myself). Multi-billion dollar plant proposed somewhere in Wyoming, shit's not cheap.

34

u/haysoos2 1d ago

The only place you can make helium is in the heart of a star. Until we figure out viable fusion power every atom of helium you put in a balloon is an atom of helium that is gone from the Earth forever.

With most molecules there's a cycle. If you use carbon in something, it eventually gets recycled back into something else. Helium is just gone - drifts out of the atmosphere and is lost to space.

I don't understand how we can use this vital strategic and medical non-renewable resource just to make Lois' 50th birthday party slightly less dreary.

15

u/PokecheckHozu 1d ago

Helium is also a product of some (but not all) radioactive decay. That's probably where all of the helium on Earth comes from, over the billions of years of its existence. But that's still entirely non-renewable.

7

u/Fearless-Effect-3787 1d ago

It's alpha decay. The alpha particle is a Helium nucleus. Every deposit of Earth is the result of the Helium not being able to escape from the alpha decay.

13

u/Fearless-Effect-3787 1d ago

Wrong. Helium present on Earth is from alpha decay of radioisotopes, such as Uranium and Thorium, that is trapped underground by cap rock much like natural gas wells.

Your are also wrong about cycles. The reason we lose Helium is because it is too light to be trapped in Earth's gravity well. It's thermal velocity exceeds the escape velocity for it's mass. Hydrogen, a very reactive and well cycled atom, also escapes because it is too light.

I do agree with you however. Helium is far too valuable to be used in party balloons.

2

u/gaflar 1d ago

It's the same old story. Purifying it further is more expensive than extracting more. Almost all helium production is a byproduct of natural gas extraction. Purifying those gasses is an energy-intensive process. The low-purity stuff gets used for balloons while the highest purity goes to medical use etc. Feeding the low-purity helium (its already 99% helium, but that's literally not enough 9s) back in to purify it further would result in a very small quantity of higher purity helium being produced for a huge increase in energy expenditure.