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Please stop spreading this "running out of heilium" nonsense. Natural gas contains plenty of helium, and making LNG produces helium as a byproduct. As soon as
by jcampbell1 14y ago
Please stop spreading this "running out of heilium" nonsense. Natural gas contains plenty of helium, and making LNG produces helium as a byproduct. As soon as the US Government stops liquidating it's Cold War reserve of helium at super low prices, every LNG facility will compress the helium and sell it. Thanks to fracking, and a return of LNG production in the US, there will be plenty of helium for the foreseeable future.
- richardjordan 14y agoNatural gas has single digits percentages of Helium. It's still a finite resource on sensible timescales (yes radioactive decay replenishes supply eventually). It has many important uses. There are good reasons to object to it being squandered in children's party balloons.
- tarice 14y agoI seriously doubt that even at higher prices it would not be commercially viable to extract Helium from Natural Gas reserves. The tiny amount of Helium contained in Natural Gas probably isn't worth the investment to separate out, especially since the company would probably have to separate it from Nitrogen or another non-reactive gas (liquify air => expensive). In which case, they'd just release it into the atmosphere.