The world has (almost) finished the helium: because this gas is so important and exhausting the reserves would be a big problem
The presence of certain gases is scary, especially the toxic ones prohibited in the event of war. But gases are scary even when they have not: before it was the hole in the ozone, now it’s the shortage of helium
Helium constitutes about 0,0005% of that gaseous mixture which is the terrestrial atmosphereand does not seem to be so important. And instead Our lives depend on this gas And the problem lies in the fact that its stocks are minimal and its price is incredibly unstable. Helium is a inert gasesthat is, that it does not react with other chemical elements. It has a very low density in the gaseous state and can become liquid at -269 ° C. It is therefore perfect to fill, among other things, i airship (Did you know that there are only less than 20 in business in the world right now?) And flow them into the sky.
Elected element of extinction?
Elio was formed by decomposition of radioactive elements in the cloak Over the course of hundreds of millions of years and in the end he infiltrated the rock formations inside the crust. It was identified for the first time in a Vesuvius lava sample in 1882. Then it was possible to extract it from a natural gas sample and within a few years there was abundance of helium, so much so that it was exploited for numerous industrial uses and to fill children’s balloons. Not only is the helium little, but the one released into the atmosphere quickly disperses in space and is Too expensive to recreate it in the laboratory. Filtering and concentrating it from the air would be impossible and therefore the industry extracts what little from the natural gas reserves found in Algeria, the United States, Russia and Qatar where the reserves are sufficiently concentrated to make the extraction economically sustainable. It is estimated that there are about 52 billion dollars of cubic meters of helium Today on earth. A few days ago the United States sold a huge underground reserve in Texas to private individuals, which has removed other certainties from a market with few securities.
What is helium for?
Without helium, The gases present in our atmosphere can interfere with the binding of metals and therefore with the welds and the creation of the alloys. The space industry uses helium to pressurize the fuel tanks of the rockets but above all The medical industry uses helium to cool the equipmentand in particular the superconductors of scanner for magnetic resonance imaging for images (RMI), which represents the main element of concern. There is a need for thousands of liters of liquid helium to work the equipment. It is estimated that every year just under 100 million resonances are performed to diagnose tumors all over the world. Without liquid helium, the coldest element of the earth, you could not keep those magnets sufficiently cold to generate the images correctly. Elio allows industrial uses not otherwise replicable. The fact that his condensation point is incredibly low allows him to be liquid and this helps scientists to discover new properties of materials such as superconductors. Helium is so useful that The demand has increased by 10% every year In the last decade while the reserves continue to decrease. And its price rises by 250% in the same period. Its high demand and limited availability ensure that prices can increase on particular occasions and speculations. At the end of magnetic resonances, certain virtuous hospitals have even come to implement recycling systems.
