“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.
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.
No helium found on earth ever, was pure enough for cryo. Not even close. All helium is found in low concentrations and spun extracted to concentrate and start to purify it. Then there are additional filter methods to finish concentrating it. Removing the hydrogen is about the hardest because it’s also abundant and small and light.
But helium used in balloons can absolutely be concentrated and purified.
hydrogen is the easy one, because you can burn it off on catalytic bed, then pass through bed of 3A MS to trap water. done
separating excess oxygen and nitrogen is easier and there’s already some nitrogen (as much as 50%) in crude helium
yes you can, crude helium + air mixture (few %) is used in first stages of cryogenic helium purifying
Jesus Christ not this guy again…
Incorrect. It is not found naturally pure, it must be distilled. Balloon helium vs cryogenic helium is like comparing ice distillation vs vapor distillation of liquor. One is cheaper but both are using up a limited resource.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_distillation
“Lookie lookie, I got a wiki!”
-you, probably.
You guys realize this is the same shit anti vaxxers do? Spend five minutes reading a fucking Wikipedia article and suddenly you’re an expert?
Christ I hate you people.
I have a degree in this stuff. Chill.
yeah it’s distilled off from nitrogen-heavy natural gas, like you could do with nitrogen-heavy gas without helium, or even air. all three processes are done commercially. the issue is that helium bearing natural gas is limited in supply and getting low enough temperature at latter stages of helium refining and liquefying requires bespoke facility. this part is hard