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What happend about the looming worldwide helium shortage

Bill D

Diamond
Joined
Apr 1, 2004
Location
Modesto, CA USA
Gotcha, it all disappears through those black holes.

Of course it does not actually disapear it just floats around in the vacuum of space. I assume not much short of a black hole has enough gravity to pull a atom of He down to the surface.
Space vacuum is about 0.25 molecules per cubic meter so not much helium floating around in space to be sucked up and sold. I further assume most space molecules are not He.
Bill D
 

camscan

Titanium
Joined
Sep 5, 2011
Location
Norfolk
Of course it does not actually disapear it just floats around in the vacuum of space. I assume not much short of a black hole has enough gravity to pull a atom of He down to the surface.
Space vacuum is about 0.25 molecules per cubic meter so not much helium floating around in space to be sucked up and sold. I further assume most space molecules are not He.
Bill D

Bill, I assume you have no sense of humour.
 

Trueturning

Diamond
Joined
Jul 2, 2019
Bill is too clever for humour :D

Humor goes a long way. I think that Helium is still up in the Air for sure. I think of how much fun it is when inhaled and a person will talk like a political figure as in one of their favorites to get a laugh. Stooping to such depths of dark humor really helps sometimes.

With Helium I think it would be funny if Moonpie could breathe some in and speak like Kamala Harris or the big guy on some topic! Can’t wait to watch the video.

Sausage Dog Central - Hilarious Compilation of MoonPie Starbox the Talking Dachshund ?
 

Ox

Diamond
Joined
Aug 27, 2002
Location
West Unity, Ohio
There is a helium store under Texas on a map that I seen recently.

As long as you can fill a balloon full of this stuff and release it into the air (read pollution or littering at least) then I guess I would have a hard time taking any news about a shortage as anything but fake news.



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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 

DDoug

Diamond
Joined
Oct 18, 2005
Location
NW Pa
There is a helium shortage grinding along right now.
Supplies are very tight and my local Roberts has a restricted client list of who may purchase.

I’m not on the list and they would not sell to me a couple of weeks ago.

So the question is, if you are welding aluminum, are you considered essential ?
 

Trboatworks

Diamond
Joined
Oct 23, 2010
Location
Maryland- USA
So the question is, if you are welding aluminum, are you considered essential ?


The terms for the restrictions as given by Roberts was one- this is company policy to enable meeting client needs, and two- they honor existing clients who have strong purchase history of using helium.

I was facing a process problem with aluminum welding and just wanted to see if helium would help me beat it.
I worked it out so I am good.
 

Bill D

Diamond
Joined
Apr 1, 2004
Location
Modesto, CA USA
Bill is too clever for humour :D

I was not sure if he was joking or not. Of course the He is "lost in space". danger danger. I believe we still have a strategic Helium reserve for the Navies needs.
I was surprised to find Canada maintains a national maple syrup reserve in Quebec to ensure supplies never fail during a disaster.
Bill D
 

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Ries

Diamond
Joined
Mar 15, 2004
Location
Edison Washington USA
Helium, like Neon, (which mostly comes from Ukraine..). are indeed short right now.
The big problem is not that we cant extract it- its how much it costs.
Cheapest way is as a byproduct of Natural Gas.
You COULD build a helium plant, or a neon plant- but it would cost billions, and then, you would have to sell it for so much that nobody would use it for balloons.

Neon is the same thing- in principal, its not that tough- its just, the Ukrainians have been selling it based on long ago amortized soviet era plants, and easy cheap natural gas.
After the war, you can forget about that coming back- seen what the Avestal mill in Maripul looks like now?
It was the second largest steel mill in Europe, and now its rubble.

So, sure, we will always be able to get Helium, and Neon- for a price.
The big boys will be working on lasers that dont need neon, for example, and MRI machines that dont need helium- but we are talking, again, billions, and years, before the new, more expensive tech arrives.
 
Joined
Apr 19, 2006
Location
Manchester, England
Not long ago those little shiny cylinders were everywhere in my bit of England. Kids were using them, especially Asian kids for some reason. You could see them discarded on the ground all over the place. Usually in little piles of 10 to 20. In the last 2 months I’ve hardly seen any.
Either there is a real shortage or it was just a craze going around that is now over.

Regards Tyrone.
 

thermite

Diamond
Not long ago those little shiny cylinders were everywhere in my bit of England. Kids were using them, especially Asian kids for some reason. You could see them discarded on the ground all over the place. Usually in little piles of 10 to 20. In the last 2 months I’ve hardly seen any.
Either there is a real shortage or it was just a craze going around that is now over.

Regards Tyrone.
Breathing it makes the voice outrageously weird - quacks like a duck - off the back of so much lower mass than Nitrogen across the vocal cords and resonant sinus cavities.

Wierded-voice put a world of hurt on Helium-mixture deep-diver-to-surface tender "phone" communications "back in the day" when working with Bev Morgan (Kirby-Morgan "band" mask developer) [1].

Our uber-rugged "Radioear" hearing-aid inertial transducers were used by many makers for deepwater audio - monitoring flow in pipes and confirming power-operated valves had actuated on seabed oil & gas rigs as well as diver communications.

"Inertial" tranducers have no diaphragm, can be "potted". Cheaper than other options for human-audio passband ..... at the time.

Eventually, electronic goods processed Helium-speak to make it more intelligible.


 
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Ox

Diamond
Joined
Aug 27, 2002
Location
West Unity, Ohio
Well they had some canister full of something lighter than air to fill balloons at my G-daughters birthday party a cpl weeks ago. Much to my displeasure....


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 

thermite

Diamond
Well they had some canister full of something lighter than air to fill balloons at my G-daughters birthday party a cpl weeks ago. Much to my displeasure....


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
Hydrogen still works for that. Slightly BETTER than Helium, actually.

OTOH.... B'Day with REAL candles?,

Truant-infantiles in Hong Kong for a spell thot it was "exciting" to innocently drag those silvery Mylar-flashed & artsy-printed balloons about.. into the Mass Transit Rail stations.. lose their grip.

Air-flow nudges the balloon towards the tube and tracks.
Overhead high-Voltage catenary wires attract it off the static charge to the Mylar.

Loud BANG and balloon debris is melted onto the wires.

PARENTS got the costs imposed, it was soon brought to a halt!
 








 
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