this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
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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
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.
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
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
“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.
The lemmy community shows itself bare when you start talking about something you have professional experience in. Its hilarious, in a humor in despair type of way. I've seen it on stuff im expirenced in and this is not the first time I've talked about how the community dissapoints me about it. Skepticism is fine and welcome . . . If you're able to change your mind when you're wrong.
You need 0° to chill properly though.
Everyone in this thread has a degree, apparently.
I sure do, in fact I've emptied more helium tanks in my career than 99.99% of the population I'm certain (10 years in gas chromatography). I know that it's more profitable to sell 99% pure helium as "party use" than it is to sell the quality of helium I use, the difference is I use enough of it that there's still some profit there, (the same reason the US of A sold off the "extra reserves") and as long as it's an unlimited resource (short term it certainly seems to be from the capitalist mindset) they're going to milk every cent of profit out of it as quickly as possible, so they'll still make some and sell it to me.
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 don't know much about Helium, so I'm a bit confused... What's to stop us from purifying grade 4 further into 4.7 and beyond besides cost? If the only thing stopping us is cost, then it's not inaccurate to say that, regardless of grade, the non-renewable element of Helium is being used in frivolous ways because it makes more money to find profitable ways to use the lower-grade helium than to actually further purify and conserve it for more important usage.
So the cost aspect is absolutely massive. You can theoretically filter elemental gold out of sea water, but it's not reasonable to do that to supply gold for use in electronics. Similarly you can purify helium as much as you want but at a certain point the cost makes whatever you were doing with it prohibitively expensive.
Right now we're still pulling helium out of the ground alongside natural gas deposits. We're also not doing everything we can to recover, recycle, or substitute the industrial and scientific grade stuff either.
As less helium gets extracted the cost will go up. This will put market pressure on all users to use it more efficiently or find substitutes wherever possible. If the price goes high enough it might also drive producers to purify helium that might have been sold at a lower grade in the past.
This find in Minnesota pushes that future scenario down the road a bit, which can either extend the status quo or buy time for technological improvements to be made that will make use and extraction more efficient.
So we should wait until scarcity is a problem before we even think about acting?
That's done humanity very well before. Fortunately for the helium industry our previous inaction will likely leave the planet uninhabitable for most life before the helium scarcity demands action.
No, we shouldn't wait.
We will, but we shouldn't.
right or wrong, you're an asshole. Nobody did anything but disagree with you, you're the only one insulting strangers. Quit being an ass.