this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
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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.