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Scientists Speak Out Against Wasting Helium In Balloons
Hugh Pickens writes "BBC reports that Tom Welton, a professor of sustainable chemistry at Imperial College, London, believes that a global shortage of helium means it should be used more carefully — and since helium cools the large magnets inside MRI scanners it is wrong to use it for balloons used at children's parties. 'We're not going to run out of helium tomorrow — but on the 30 to 50 year timescale we will have serious problems of having to shut things down if we don't do something in the meantime,' says Welton. 'When you see that we're literally just letting it float into the air, and then out into space inside those helium balloons, it's just hugely frustrating. It is absolutely the wrong use of helium.' Two years ago, the shortage of helium prompted American Nobel Prize winner Robert Richardson to speak out about the huge amounts of helium wasted every day because the gas is kept artificially cheap by the U.S. government and to call for a dramatic increase in helium's price. But John Lee, chairman of the UK's Balloon Association, insists that the helium its members put into balloons is not depriving the medical profession of the gas. 'The helium we use is not pure,' says Lee. 'It's recycled from the gas which is used in the medical industry, and mixed with air. We call it balloon gas rather than helium for that reason.'"
The notion that because gas is only 90% pure, it is useless to the medical profession is rather ridiculous.
Refining this gas back to 99.99% helium is almost trivial, compared to extracting it from sources where the helium content is in parts per million.
If there isn't a renewing source of helium, why hasn't all of it escaped into space yet? It is small enough to even seep through solid containers, given enough time. If the US has a stockpile of the stuff that it's selling off, how did they acquire it? Can't they do it again?
This is just a small item, but it goes to a bigger theme, as a 26 year old, I have been told that I cant have a nice life style because its bad for earth or a waste of resources or bad for your health.
Because of cow pies, we are supposed to eat less red meat, or ideally none at al!
because of global warming (which I do think is real), Im supposed to drive a tiny little car that has a hard time going over 60 MPH
Because of health concerns, I shouldn't salt my food to taste, or eat sugary treats,
Because of speculation in the market and salarys not going up with inflation, the nice home that cost my parents the equivalent of about 2 years post tax post med insurance take home pay will now cost me 4 years of the same.
And now I cant even get my kid a ballon for their birthday? What the fuck is this? Its almost like the west is becoming the new third world. I just want a decent life like my parents and their parents had. The sickest part is the people telling us we shouldn't have the good life use exotic luxuries private jets and limos. Its an outrage!
Build more helium extraction plants in natural gas refineries.
Really.
The reason helium was (relatively) cheap was that the US built a nice large extraction plant at a natural gas field with a very high concentration of helium. That field is starting to run out, so prices are naturally going up.
Helium is not, however, limited to that one field. There are many other natural gas fields with varying concentrations of helium, and all you need to do is add a cryogenic helium extraction plant to a natural gas refinery to pull that helium out of the existing gas feeds. This is already happening in a few places, and with current technology, it's not that expensive to build more plants. It's only cost effective in a field with higher concentrations of helium - but there are quite a few of those.
The United States has proven helium reserves of about fifty years... and unproven reserves of about a thousand times that. ("Proven" means "we know it's there," and "unproven" means "we're pretty sure it's there, but haven't gotten around to it yet for economic or legal reasons").
As a medical doctor working outside of the US I am appalled at the amount of over-investigation that goes in within the US medical profession. There are probably thousands of unnecessary MRI scans undertaken every month in the US. Perhaps with the scarcity of a required gas, this might bring rates of MRI scans back in line with normal.
I have a feeling that as soon as helium got expensive, we'd suddenly have all kinds of good ideas about how to recycle it more effectively. I mean, it's a noble gas, it's not like it gets "used up" in any medical or industrial application! I know it can escape through even the smallest cracks, but it doesn't seem so hard to build some kind of secondary containment around medical imaging machines. Separating helium from air is trivially easy with a gas centrifuge. This could probably be done on site.
Sorry to burst a bubble, err, balloon here for you.
Pure hydrogen doesn't go "boom" in normal air. Sure, it will result in nice flames, but normal air doesn't supply enough oxygen for a big boom.
I've tried both, hydrogen and a mix of hydrogen and oxygen as a teen, and now guess which one resulted in a one week detention by my parents.
There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
I'm getting tired of people saying "the market will fix it". The market fixes nothing. It's a broken ecosystem. It works by positive feedbacks and constantly overshoots, which means periods of apparent prosperity followed by misery. The market needs regulation because it lacks other forms of negative feedback loops which are essential to make it a healthy system. The end result of letting the market decide can only be, shortages, very dire shortages, of any substance whose availability we mean to regulate through it. I say, if something is essential, DON'T leave it to the market.
Long ago, I worked at a commercial lab where tanks of H2, 02, and N2O (nitrous oxide) were used for flame or plasma ion detectors. For fun, we used to launch "Hindenburgs" ... large trash bags filled with hydrogen plus a latex glove filled with the oxydizer and trailed by a fuse of burning paraffin film. The balloon would sail off into the night sky and detonate at a safe altitude and distance downwind. Usually. Our antics abruptly halted when one exploded prematurely just a dozen feet off the ground. The concussion and heat convinced us to give up our fun.
Obi-Wan: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were sudden
So these 'academics' then should buy all the helium and preserve it if they are worried,
Academics won't have a problem sourcing enough helium. It's medicine which needs the amounts in its MRI scanners. This is an example of "altriusm", something stupid libertarians don't understand.
because at this point the price for He is low and the market sets the price.
There is nothing like a free market in helium. Knowing this would have required a quick amount of research, something stupid libertarians don't do.
This Richardson person wants the market to artificially increase the price of He by a factor of 20.
No, he wants regulation to protect the supply of helium. The market doesn't "artificially" do anything - it's a contradiction in terms, something stupid libertarians wouldn't understand.
Who is this dude that he thinks he can dictate to the world how it must use its resources?
He has no authority on his own, but has as much right as anyone to petition the government, something a stupid libertarians would never do - unless it might make them more wealthy.
Let me put it this way, if the market decided to blow up the planet, nobody could prevent it, it would just happen. Using He for balloons may just mean that the planet will blow up later on because of more wars, who knows,
You, Sir, are definitely an Internet kook.
but it's not up to anybody to dictate to all people how they should live and die.
Thank goodness! There was me thinking that you were dictating to the world.
Exactly! Use liquid hydrogen to cool the large magnets inside MRI scanners.
Liquid hydrogen boils at 20.28 K. MgB2 superconducts at 39 K. (So neon would also work, but it has problems similar to helium.)
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
Helium is also available from the atmosphere for several $1000/kg. So we won't run out.
Most Cryogenic applications like MRI magnets can use Hydrogen 14K or Neon 24K instead.
But I agree save the helium for more important uses.
Instead use Neon - its a renewable resource from the atmosphere, and would only cost about $300/kg of lift or a couple of $ per balloon - not much worse than helium, and well within typical retail margins, also won't leak away as quickly.
For bigger lift applications use methane. Dirt cheap, commonly available, not poisonous, less leaky than hydrogen or helium and would work fine for most lift applications. Downside is flammability, though far less dangerous than hydrogen, and rises quickly in air to disperse in an accident. A party balloon with 4 litres would only release 100kJ when burnt - though that is more than the 20kJ from an equivalent hydrogen balloon. It is much harder to ignite methane - only ignites in a relatively narrow range of air-methane mixes, spanning about 4-15%, vs hydrogen 4-75%
This is indeed a good idea. A baloon filled with hydrogen is not much more dangerous than one filled with air. If you hold it over a flame, it will make about the same pop as an air-filled baloon. The 0.3 g of hydrogen in a baloon is not enough to produce any serious amount heat as it burns. (We did this back in high-school chemistry class. We had an awesome teacher.) Hydrogen is cheaper than helium, and does not diffuse as easily through the baloon surface, so baloons would last longer.
There is some danger in the handling of cylinders. If hydrongen leaks out in a room with poor ventilation, there is a risk of explosion. However, the same is true for propane/butane gas which is used in kitchen stoves, and most people seem to be able to handle that.
Another danger is when stupid people inhale baloon gas and asphyxiate. With helium, this problem is commonly solved by adding some oxygen to the mix. Hydrogen cannot be safely mixed with oxygen, so you'd either have to tell the stupid people not to do that, or accept a slight decline in the stupid population as they figure it out for themselves.
First off, this was last reported in March in the UK's Guardian as well.
More to the point, the US Gov. had a surplus of it from the 1920's that it sold off much of in the late 1990's so part of this is self imposed.
Also, much of current day helium is being used for vacuum chamber leak testing for semiconductor production, aerial surveillance balloons,
UAV's and regular old heli-arc welding in factories and shops all over the world.
I'm guessing the use for the surveillance balloons and stockpiling to support them is more to blame than any number of little party balloons.
What you're seeing is a lag in time from the Fed Gov's helium privatization program where private industry has not yet ramped up production
to meet a decades standard level of consumption.
Not some scientists opinion where little kids balloons are affecting a world resource market.
Citation needed. And, while I agree with the XKCD take on mythbusters, they are not a suitable scientific or engineering source to cite.
To back up the claim that the skin of the Hindenburg initiated the fire I will site Engineering Disasters - Lessons to be Learned, by Don Lawson. ISBN 1-86058-459-4, pages 3 to 19. One quote from this section of the book:
"Addison Brian's tests
"In 1994 Dr Bain managed to get samples of the outer covering of the Hindenburg and carried out tests. The outer covering of cellulose acetate butyrate dope and fine aluminum powder was similar to the rocket fuel he was familiar with at NASA. He found that the aluminum and dope had bled through the fabric in places and had combined with the iron oxide on the inner surface. The resulting mixture is similar to a thermite fuse mixture used to achieve high temperatures in welding.
"Dr Bain tested samples of similarly doped fabric for their potential to be ignited by an electrostatic discharge. When an arc struck down onto the fabric samples, it only resulted in local damage. Airships struck by lightning had shown similar localized damage. When the arc was parallel to the surface of the fabric, the electrical energy was sufficient to ignite the sample, which was quickly consumed by fire."
The reference provided for the above quote was: Bain, A. and Schmidtchen, U. (2000) Afterglow of a Myth: Why and How the Hindenburg Burnt, DWV, January, www.dwvinfo.de
Other parts of this section go into further detail, including other hypothesizes for what caused the disaster. If you read Engineering Disasters, he does not claim that they mystery is completely solved. Indeed, It will probably never be solved with 100% certainty. But the theory of lightning igniting the flammable skin appears to be the most probable cause of the start of the fire. Obviously once the ship was on fire the hydrogen burnt, no doubt making the fire far worse. Who knows, maybe Helium would have put out the fire...
Do you have a source better than Mythbusters (and better than Wikipedia and Snopes)? If so, I would be interested....
-WolvesOfTheNight
The incident is burned into the public psyche not because it was particularly horrorific, or because it was some example of bad design held up for criticism -- its notable for one reason only. It was the first case of broad media overhype. It was the great-grand-daddy of all the shit we see on the "news" today.
Actually, it was publicized for the same reason the Titanic sinking was -- a bunch of rich people died. There had been other airship accidents, and other naval accidents, but it wasn't newsworthy because nobody "important" had died... until then (respectively).
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I was wondering - couldn't we do fusion reactors, which involve protium & deuterium, and produce He-3 that way? We'd have plenty of supply for the baloons
There is no shortage of Helium.
Nor is it particularly hard to extract.
The problem is that the US government had pretty much cornered the market on the gas, and then decided Blimps were not it its future, and started selling off the entire (enormous) reserve at below market prices. Soon this inventory will be exhausted, and production will resume by private industry just as it was done in the 30s.
This is strictly a manufactured shortage, due to a quirk of history. There is no more real shortage of Helium gas on earth than there ever was.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It was the first case of broad media overhype. It was the great-grand-daddy of all the shit we see on the "news" today.
This was one of many that preceded before it. The first really famous case of yellow press that rules today would be "Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!" started by Hearst and Pulitzer.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”