Helium

A brief look into the prospect of Helium in a sustainable world

What is Helium?

The name was derived from the Greek word ‘Helios’ and was attributed to two astronomers (PubChem, 2024) (RSC, 2024). French astronomer Pierre J. C. Janssen discovered Helium’s existence, and English astronomer Joseph Norman Lockyer named that new existence through independent studies (PubChem, 2024).

Helium is the second most abundant element within the universe, but the most finite and rarest found naturally on the planet. It is found naturally as an inert gas making it safe to handle due to its unreactive state (RSC, 2024).

Uses of Helium

Helium can be used in many different applications (ACS, 2024) which include,

Large Hadron Colliders (LHC)
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy (NMR)
Coolant gas
Welding
Semi-conductors and fiber optics manufacturing
Fusion reactors using the isotope version of Helium-3 (Bradshaw & Hamacher, 2013)

How is Helium made?

Early discovery of Helium gas on Earth was in 1895 by Scottish chemist Sir William Ramsay who conducted experiments using uranium (PubChem, 2024). It was produced using radioactive decay which is a highly dangerous process, making it unfeasible. Helium gas’s molecular density is lighter than most atmospheric gases. This allows it to escape into space, resulting in its scarcity on Earth.

The most conventional method of extracting Helium gas today is from processing natural gas. The natural gas undergoes several processes to remove its impurities and the cyrogenic processing stage cools down the gas, allowing helium gas to be collected (Kiger, 2023). However, helium gas is becoming more expensive due to depleted reserves.

Helium’s future?

As the world becomes more sustainable, the extraction of hydrocarbons will no longer become necessary as more clean renewable sources will be relied on. Due to the decrease in demand for natural gas, the supply of helium will also be reduced. Hence, the search for a more stable supply of helium gas is currently in progress.

There is a growing concern that if Russia and Canada were to open up more natural gas sites for extracting helium gas, the supply would be stable enough to last until 2040 (Provornaya, Filimonova, Eder, Nemov, & Zemnukhova, 2022). Additionally, the race to the moon for the detected helium-3 isotopes can be a good source of helium gas. However, the travel time towards the moon is a limitation that is currently faced and not easily overcome.

When considering the future of the world, the sustainability of helium gas as a whole seems to be very unsustainable in its production and recovery. Due to this realisation, there is a need to consider finding either an alternative replacement for helium gas or increasing the recoverability rate of spent helium gas to prevent the complete collapse of supply.

References

ACS. (2024). Helium. Retrieved from ACS Chemistry for Life: https://www.acs.org/greenchemistry/research-innovation/endangered-elements/helium.html

Bradshaw, A., & Hamacher, T. (2013). Nuclear fusion and the helium supply problem. Fusion Engineering and Design, 2694-2697.

Kiger, P. J. (2023, November 30). How Is Helium Made? Retrieved from howstuffworks: https://science.howstuffworks.com/question12.htm

PubChem. (2024). Helium. Retrieved from PubChem: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/element/Helium

RSC. (2024). Helium. Retrieved from Royal Society of Chemistry: https://www.rsc.org/periodic-table/element/2/helium