Helium supply crises rapidly approaching

[Ace Pace]

Link

The element that lifts things like balloons, spirits and voice ranges is being depleted so rapidly in the world's largest reserve, outside of Amarillo, Texas, that supplies are expected to be depleted there within the next eight years.

This deflates more than the Goodyear blimp and party favors. Its larger impact is on science and technology, according to Lee Sobotka, Ph.D., professor of chemistry and physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

"Helium's use in science is extremely broad, but its most important use is as a coolant," said Sobotka, a specialist in nuclear chemistry and physics who collaborates with researchers at several national laboratories.

Generally the larger users of helium (He), such as the national laboratories, have the infrastructure to efficiently use and recycle helium, Sobotka said. The same cannot be said of many smaller scale users.

Helium plays a role in nuclear magnetic resonance, mass spectroscopy, welding, fiber optics and computer microchip production, among other technological applications. NASA uses large amounts annually to pressurize space shuttle fuel tanks.

"Helium is non-renewable and irreplaceable. Its properties are unique and unlike hydrocarbon fuels (natural gas or oil), there are no biosynthetic ways to make an alternative to helium. All should make better efforts to recycle it."

Drift away

The helium we have on Earth has been built up over billions of years from the decay of natural uranium and thorium. The decay of these elements proceeds at a super-snail's pace. For example, one of the most important isotopes for helium production is uranium-238. In the entire life span of the earth only half of the uranium-238 atoms have decayed (yielding eight helium atoms in the process) and an inconsequential fraction decay in about 1,000 years.

As the uranium and thorium decay, some of the helium is trapped along with natural gas deposits in certain geological formations. Some of the produced helium seeps out of the Earth's mantle and drifts into the atmosphere, where there is approximately five parts per million of helium. However this helium, as well as any helium ultimately released into the atmosphere by users, drifts up and is eventually lost to the Earth.

Helium is applied broadly in science and technology, from nuclear magnetic resonance to computer microchip production and devices like this mass spectroscopy apparatus.

"When we use what has been made over the approximate 4.5 billion of years the Earth has been around, we will run out," Sobotka said . "We cannot get too significant quantities of helium from the sun — which can be viewed as a helium factory 93 million miles away — nor will we ever produce helium in anywhere near the quantities we need from Earth-bound factories. Helium could eventually be produced directly in nuclear fusion reactors and is produced indirectly in nuclear fission reactors, but the quantities produced by such sources are dwarfed by our needs."

Unlike any other element, helium 4 (two protons, two neutrons) becomes a liquid below 4.2 Kelvin, just four degrees short of absolute zero. When one puts an object next to liquid helium, energy is extracted from the object, making it colder. The energy extracted from the object vaporizes the helium. It is this helium vapor which, Sobotka claims, should always be recaptured, to be recycled for future use.

Much of the world's supply of helium lies in a reserve in the Texas Panhandle, better known for the locales of Larry McMurtry's novels, such as "The Last Picture Show," and "Texasville," than as an elemental factory farm.

Scientists haven't even approached mining helium out of the air because costs are too prohibitive.

A rebel, a loner

Both hydrogen and helium, the first two elements on the Periodic Table are very abundant in the universe (about 92 percent and about 8 percent of the atoms, respectively). Helium is rare on Earth while hydrogen is abundant. The reason is that helium is a rebel, a loner, and it does not combine with other atoms while hydrogen does. Hydrogen is one of the two elements that make water. Under standard conditions, there are no combined or molecular forms of helium.

"It's the most Noble of gases, meaning it's very stable and non-reactive for the most part," Sobotka said. "Helium has a closed electronic configuration, a very tightly bound atom. If you try to extract an electron from helium, you pay a lot of energy to pull it off. It's very high in ionization energy. It is this coveting of its own electrons that prevents combination with other elements."

In addition to the Texas panhandle, helium can be found in small regions of Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma. It is marketed in Australia and Algeria. And Russia has the world's largest reserves of natural gas, where helium certainly exists. But there is no push to market it, as, for the short term, supplies are adequate, though increasingly costly.

Sobotka believes that Russia will be the world's major source of helium in 30 years.

The price of liquid helium is about $5 per liter, having gone up more than 50 percent over the past year because of what Sobotka calls "conventional" economics. He cited the withdrawal of some companies from the marketplace, and the emergence of others that are not yet in production, as the driving force behind higher prices, and (as yet) a scarcity of the element.

Helium capture in the United States began after World War I, when the primary use of the gas was for dirigibles. Because helium is non-flammable, its use in balloons prevented another Hindenburg tragedy. The U.S. government ran the helium industry for 70 years, but since the mid-90s it has been in the domain of the oil and natural gas industries.

Tell it like it is

"The government had the good vision to store helium, and the question now is: Will industry have the vision to capture it when extracting natural gas, and consumers the wisdom to capture and recycle?" Sobotka said. "This takes long-term vision because present market forces are not sufficient to compel prudent practice."

Helium plays second fiddle to marketing oil and natural gas, and much of it is lost in a process that removes noncombustible nitrogen and helium from the product of prime interest.

"When they stick that straw into the ground to suck out oil and gas, the helium comes out, and if it doesn't get captured it drifts into the atmosphere and is lost," Sobotka said. "Helium production is a side industry to oil and natural gas, an endeavor that nobody wants to lose money on."

Meanwhile, laboratories worldwide could make better attempts at conserving helium. They can either use costly machines called liquefiers that can capture, store and reliquefy helium on site, or researchers can take captured helium in gas form, return it to the company that originally sold it to them and receive a monetary return, just as in a deposit on a bottle.

"We have to be thinking of these things," he said. "Up to now, the issue often hasn't risen to the level that it's important. It's a problem for the next generation of scientists. But it's incumbent upon us to have a vision, and tell it like it is — a resource that is more strictly non-renewable than either oil or gas."

[Zablorg]

Goddamn, is there anything that *isn't* running out these days?

[Jaepheth]

Goddamn, is there anything that *isn't* running out these days?

We have enough idiots to last into the foreseeable future.

[Darth Lucifer]

Eventually it will be illegal to make yourself sound like a chipmunk.

[Eris]

Gah, I don't mind a bit of anthropomorphism in my science, but calling an inert gas a 'rebel' and a 'loner'? I really despise science reporting.

That said, this is hardly news. We've known that we're running out of He for years, and there have actually been articles posted on this forum before. But unfortunately the petrochemical companies aren't very interested in efficiently extracting He, and there isn't that much on Earth to begin with. Although even if we run out here, the moon and the gas giants have incredible quantities of He, so we're not completely out of luck. Either that, or we could see about developing high temperature (i.e. 60K where you can use liquid N as a coolant, assuming the application isn't disrupted by the Leidenfrost effect) superconductors to replace the one's currently using liquid He.

Also, the problem goes beyond just lab science as the article implies. NMR spectroscopy, which relies on using He cooled superconducting magnets to work, is widely used in medicine where it's what we use to do CAT scans and the like. A lot of our safest and most useful medical imaging technology will be crippled if we don't either find a solution to the shortage, or invent high temp superconductors real quick.

[Surlethe]

If necessary, would it be possible and feasible to set up fusion reactors primarily to generate helium, not electricity? After all, we have an abundance of hydrogen in the oceans, and when you put hydrogens together you get heliums.

[Eris]

If necessary, would it be possible and feasible to set up fusion reactors primarily to generate helium, not electricity? After all, we have an abundance of hydrogen in the oceans, and when you put hydrogens together you get heliums.

Assuming you had affordable fusion reactors it would certainly be possible. Now, it may, and probably will, be so expensive as to make it economically un-feasible. However, there very well may be a way to harvest the He as a by-product of fusion.

This would probably be a band-aid over a bullet wound, though. The power density of fusion means that you won't be getting much He per kW-hour as compared to with how much we need for superconductors. This will probably be a supplemental source someday, but conservation and recycling with have to be the mainstay even then until we get cheap Neptunean D, H, and He mines set up. (Or something like that anyway.)

[Ariphaos]

If necessary, would it be possible and feasible to set up fusion reactors primarily to generate helium, not electricity? After all, we have an abundance of hydrogen in the oceans, and when you put hydrogens together you get heliums.

Assuming enough power plants to produce ~25 terawatts of energy, it comes to ~50 grams/second total, or ~1,500 tonnes per year, assuming good efficiency on both power generation and collecting.

Less than 10% of current production. Not a savior, but certainly not bad as a secondary source in say, 2050 (Assuming DEMO works and commercial plants follow suit relatively quickly).

[Sikon]

[...]

High temperature superconductors operating at liquid nitrogen temperatures (e.g. ~ 77 K) have been around for a while. Although still much below room temperature (almost 300 K), the newest record is apparently 175 K. But expansion in use of superconductors like the preceding has been limited, particularly with the trouble of attempting to make such hard, brittle ceramics into wires.

However, in 2001, superconductivity was discovered in magnesium diboride (39 K critical temperature), which can be cheaper and more suitable for manufacturing into wire. For example, last year, a MRI system was produced using MgB2 superconductor, operating at 20 K. That's liquid hydrogen temperature, although neither liquid hydrogen nor any other cryogenic liquid is actually used for its electrical cooling system, as described here.

With that said, helium supply is not quite so small as the impression the news story aims to give, which naturally tries to make this into an exciting major crisis drawing reader interest.

The limited amount of helium cheaply extractable from natural gas is a nuisance for potential expanded future use of blimps and balloons. (That's although hot air or steam, ammonia, hydrogen, etc. can be alternatives in some cases, such as hydrogen for unmanned weather balloons). Price rise in helium could especially reduce its usage in optional applications like welding cover gas, one major use: 2700 metric tons in the U.S. in 2003.

But applications where a relatively limited amount of helium is of great value will still tend to be supplied in the foreseeable future. In the U.S., usage in cryogenics was 3800 metric tons in 2003.

The exact price is a separate topic, as it depends not just on supply but also on desired demand, which is growing faster. But world helium production is increasing, with it having gone from 106 million cubic meters in 1994 to 140 million cubic meters in 2000, further increasing to 170 million cubic meters in 2006. Such is due to new production, such as Qatar primarily starting recently, going from 0.2 million cubic meters in 2005 to reach 7 million cubic meters in 2006, probably motivated by the economic incentive with price rise.

As estimated by the USGS, total helium reserves worldwide are 7000+ million cubic meters, while the reserve base is 40000 million cubic meters. Such figures are like 40 and 240 times last year's production, respectively.

As terms are used by the USGS, the former means the "part of the reserve base which could be economically extracted or produced at the time of determination" (definitions here). In other words, the former reserve figure is the amount of helium which could be produced at an amount roughly comparable to current production costs, while trying to tap more of the total reserve base would lead to cost increase.

The term "reserve base" means the amount of helium anticipated as having potential future value by the USGS: helium present at substantial concentration in natural gas fields, etc.

Aside from helium being the second most common element in the universe, even the total amount of helium on earth is a vastly greater quantity than the preceding reserve base figure. Earth's ~ 5.1E18 kg atmosphere is the equivalent of 4E18 m^3 of air at sea level STP, and the 5.2 parts per million trace concentration by volume of helium amounts to 2E13 cubic meters of helium equivalent.

The total amount of helium in the atmosphere is thus 20000 billion cubic meters. Nominally, that is 100,000 times the current annual helium usage rate.

But extracting helium from the atmosphere where it is so diluted would be expensive. An analogy is another noble gas, neon. While neon is extracted from the atmosphere, that's only because there isn't a cheaper source, unlike helium in natural gas. With separation from trace amounts in air, neon is expensive, sometimes used for refrigeration coolant but with a cost on the order of $100 per cubic liter of liquid neon.

Helium is 3.5 times more rare than neon in air, although more abundant than krypton, and the cost might be up to hundreds of dollars per cubic liter of liquid helium. Since the gas at STP has a density around 800 times less than the cryogenic liquid, such would correspond to up to hundreds of dollars per cubic meter of gaseous helium.

In the near future, it will be much cheaper to obtain helium from underground sources, like the earlier USGS reserve estimates suggest. Such are orders of magnitude more limited in total supply than the helium in the atmosphere but vastly cheaper due to being far less diluted.

[Sikon]

If necessary, would it be possible and feasible to set up fusion reactors primarily to generate helium, not electricity? After all, we have an abundance of hydrogen in the oceans, and when you put hydrogens together you get heliums.

Possibly helium might be collected as a byproduct. But it would be a relatively minor side benefit compared to the energy and electricity itself. While the exact ratio may change in the future, currently, all commercial helium production in the U.S. is about $0.4 billion annual value, while, in contrast, the value of electricity production is literally on the order of 1000x greater, a few hundred billion dollars annually. And the amount of reactors producing that much electricity would produce a lesser amount of helium.

Even extracting helium from air like neon and krypton are obtained today would be far less expensive than to build reactors just for helium production, although there are plenty of other reasons for building nuclear reactors.

[Sikon]

Assuming enough power plants to produce ~25 terawatts of energy, it comes to ~50 grams/second total, or ~1,500 tonnes per year, assuming good efficiency on both power generation and collecting.

Under those assumptions, it could be a byproduct worth collecting. With that said, though, the value of 25 terawatts of energy is trillions of dollars annually, while ~ 1500 metric tons of helium (~ 1.3E7 cubic liters of liquid) could be obtained even from air extraction for literally orders of magnitude less expense.

However, the possibility of someday up to hundreds of dollars expense per liter of liquid helium for air extraction is not applicable to the near-term future anyway, as the USGS reserve estimates suggest that there will instead be continued extraction from remaining far cheaper underground sources.

[Sikon]

EDIT:

When referring to the cost of liquid helium, I mean the cost of the amount of helium gas used to make it. That's what is relevant in this discussion. Total costs are a separate matter since there is the refrigeration expense with the cryogenic temperature.

[Eris]

When referring to the cost of liquid helium, I mean the cost of the amount of helium gas used to make it. That's what is relevant in this discussion. Total costs are a separate matter since there is the refrigeration expense with the cryogenic temperature.

That's pretty unavoidable no matter how you go about getting your coolant, so it's reasonably safe to simply ignore it as constant across the discussion. Technically there probably are relative advantages with given coolants, but figuring out the details would require a lot more research than I at least am willing to put in to this.

High temperature superconductors operating at liquid nitrogen temperatures (e.g. ~ 77 K) have been around for a while. Although still much below room temperature (almost 300 K), the newest record is apparently 175 K. But expansion in use of superconductors like the preceding has been limited, particularly with the trouble of attempting to make such hard, brittle ceramics into wires.

However, in 2001, superconductivity was discovered in magnesium diboride (39 K critical temperature), which can be cheaper and more suitable for manufacturing into wire. For example, last year, a MRI system was produced using MgB2 superconductor, operating at 20 K. That's liquid hydrogen temperature, although neither liquid hydrogen nor any other cryogenic liquid is actually used for its electrical cooling system, as described here.

I was actually not aware that MgB2 could be used as a hi temp superconductor. It does make sense that it's more promising than the alternatives for practical applications, though, since as I recall MgB2 is always metallic.

Although that said, helium still is a desirable coolant over something like hydrogen or nitrogen and not only due to its low b.p. For instance, the problem of flash vapourisation from the Leidenfrost effect is not present, consequently avoiding the build up of an insulation layer between the coolant and the conductor.

Also, out of curiosity, what are the units for the comparison between abundance in He and Ne that you used?

[Admiral Valdemar]

If the field at Kovykta isn't developed on time, then it is predicted that severe shortages could occur by 2015. Remember, as with oil, this is not a case of running out of the product. It is, and always will be for the foreseeable future, a case of cost and extraction rates. These alone would lead to major issues in supply, regardless of how large the actual reserves are. There is still plenty of oil and uranium in the ground, yet this does not deny such commodities extreme price increases when production cannot match demand consistently.

The US cannot continue to supply everyone on its own and has seen its reserves deplete a considerable amount in the last decade. Time will tell whether the new gas fields in planning will come on-stream in time to off-set such draw downs.

[KlavoHunter]

There are already problems with Helium supplies - my father was telling me that he was having serious trouble finding any helium at all through their regular suppliers for a large CAT scanner (Or some piece of equipment, I forgot what) that the Veterans' hospital he works on biomedical equipment at runs. They usually have it delivered in 500-liter bottles, they ended up finding 300 liters in a nonstandard bottle.

[Sikon]

Also, out of curiosity, what are the units for the comparison between abundance in He and Ne that you used?

Helium is about 3.5 times less of the atmosphere than neon, as expressed by volume or by the ratio of partial pressures (in contrast to what would be a much different figure for the ratio of abundance by mass with the differing molecular weights).

Specifically, as expressed by volume, the concentration of helium is about 5.2 parts per million, while neon is 18.2 ppm.

[Darth Ruinus]

Just another reason that I get pissed that I am born right in the time when the world seems to be going into the crapper.

First oil and all that shit its going to bring, now fucking He?

[Singular Intellect]

Just another reason that I get pissed that I am born right in the time when the world seems to be going into the crapper.

First oil and all that shit its going to bring, now fucking He?

Imagine how all the people a couple of years ito WW2 felt.

[Darth Ruinus]

Just another reason that I get pissed that I am born right in the time when the world seems to be going into the crapper.

First oil and all that shit its going to bring, now fucking He?

Imagine how all the people a couple of years ito WW2 felt.

I know, I totally feel their pai----

nah, Im going to stop kidding now. It was a poorly thought out joke anyways.

Anyways, what are the chances that any of those cool reactor things coming up? As someone said, we have known we are running out of this stuff for a while now, just like we have known we are running oil, and I dont hear anything being done about that.

[Sikon]

Goddamn, is there anything that *isn't* running out these days?

Just another reason that I get pissed that I am born right in the time when the world seems to be going into the crapper.

First oil and all that shit its going to bring, now fucking He?

Not everything, mostly fossil fuel.

Helium is a particular case where it is a resource tied to fossil fuels (natural gas) for its cheapest supply, although there will still be a lot of helium around in the future as previously described. Helium's a pretty small component of the overall economy, under 1/10000th of the total in the value of production per year; the economy could suffer significantly in the future from other causes but not particularly helium.

Meanwhile, for example, the very most important metals, iron and aluminum, aren't much of an issue, even comprising 6% and 8% respectively of the quadrillions of tons of the average crustal rock by mass, in the form of oxides mixed with other mineral constituents, not that resorting to mining the average rock is actually necessary. The most possible is a moderate decrease in the quality of ore used, but, for example, the reserve base for good iron ore is on the order of a trillion tons, as estimated by the USGS, though much scrap metal is recycled too.

World production of this most important metal of all is prospering, going from 1 billion tons in 1994 to 1.7 billion tons in 2006. Such isn't something someone would usually hear as a news story, as opposed to a stream of articles like that of the opening post, but that's like how one is more likely to hear about one murder than a dozen births.

Likewise, the primary building blocks of life and biomass, CNOH (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen) are abundant enough. For example, there can be need for more desalination plants, etc., but the supply of enough cubic kilometers of water is there.

One could also look at concrete (produced in more quantity than almost anything else), sulfur (used for perhaps the most major industrial chemical: sulfuric acid), potassium, phosphorus, etc.

But such are a similar idea. Sometimes civilization ended up relying upon rare resources that happened to just be temporarily inexpensive, but, in the majority of cases, the very most important resources tend to be the more common ones.

In general, if mankind eventually transitions to using primarily just the practically unlimited resources like those common even in the average rock, rather than the special ones present in relatively small quantities, analogously to having solar or nuclear energy instead of fossil fuel energy, there can be hope for the future.

[Marko Dash]

could we go back to using hydrogen?

[Admiral Valdemar]

could we go back to using hydrogen?

For what purpose? Many of the industry and research roles that require helium use it for the extremely low freezing temperatures it can sustain and its total inertness. You can't use hydrogen for such things in the majority of cases, so the best would be for leisure LTA craft, where modern technology could offer designs that would never suffer the accidents that killed off the luxury airship cruisers of the '20s and '30s.

There are elements that could offer certain properties like helium, but helium is the more useful product to use, hence why it is today.