UK, US and India react to helium shortage

The US state of play
In January, a report from Kim McGuire at the St Louis Dispatch alerted the US to a threat of depletion of current domestic helium supplies at the current pace of usage according to managers of the only US national helium stockpile near Amarillo Texas.  Scientist claim that helium reserves could be depleted in as little as a decade, a reality which worrying experts in  of medicine, microchip manufacture, nuclear science, and party balloons.

Helium, abundant in the universe is relatively scarce here on earth, but plays a major role in many facets of industrial production. Dwindling helium supplies have driven helium prices up by as much as 50% over the past twelve months, deeply affecting companies such as Praxair, Inc. INASA uses massive amounts of helium annually to pressurise fuel tanks for shuttle missions.

Lee Sobotka, a chemistry and physics professor at Washington University stated "...it's incumbent upon us to have a vision, and tell it like it is,  a resource that is more strictly nonrenewable than either oil or gas."

Presently, efforts are successfully under way to make helium use more efficient and to recapture helium at it's points of use. As an element it can be captured as a by-product of natural gas extraction, but intensity in those efforts needs to be redoubled.

Adding to the supply concerns currently faced are the facts that two off shore helium producers have faltered in their efforts to bring helium plants on line, and several domestic producers have shuttered domestic helium plants in recent years.

K.S. Parthasarathy writing in The Tribune, India also refers to Prof Lee Sobotka's awarnings that helium 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.

“Helium is nonrenewable and irreplaceable… unlike hydrocarbon fuels (natural gas or oil) there are no biosynthetic ways to make an alternative to helium,” he clarified. It is a rare gas with many properties critical to several applications in high technology."

As helium does not become radioactive, it is a good coolant in nuclear reactors. Helium is the primary coolant in Pebble Bed Modular Reactors, innovative reactors of 165 MWe, being installed in South Africa. It is used as the cover gas in the Indian pressurised heavy water reactors

Being non-flammable it is a safer gas to fill balloons than hydrogen and the ideal inert gas shield for arc welding. In some countries, helium is cheaper than argon, another gas used for the same purpose. Helium is an excellent protective gas for growing silicon and germanium crystals.

It is the pressurising agent of choice for liquid fuel rockets and a leak detection agent to identify extremely tiny leaks. Helium’s role in nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectrometry is unique. All adding up to the fact that a world without helium is unthinkable!

Helium may be of primordial or radiogenic origin. NASA’s Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) satellite provided some evidence of helium gas left over from the big bang. Uranium-238 and thorium-232 in the earth’s crust and mantle emit alpha particles which pick up two electrons to become radiogenic helium.

In the entire life span of the earth, only half of the uranium-238 atoms have decayed — yielding eight helium atoms in the process. Helium mixes with natural gas and will remain with it until extracted. Helium that escapes into the atmosphere may be lost permanently. The atmospheric concentration of helium is very low at about 5.2 parts per million, too low to be harvested economically.

India takes action                                                                           

                                                                                                        Helium enrichment plant. Courtesy: www.dae.gov.in
India currently imports virtually all its helium requirements of 10,000 normal cubic metres per month from the USA. Scientists at Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC), an institution under the Department of Atomic Energy, did some pioneering work in the field; they estimated that thermal spring gases at Bakereswar and Tantloi in West Bengal contain 1.4 and 1.26 vol % of helium respectively. Extracting and purifying helium from thermal springs and monazite sands are not commercially viable proposals.

The Ministry of Science and Technology had set up a special task force in early 2005 to identify India’s helium reserves. Taking into account the strategic importance of helium, the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation set up a Rs 250 crore pilot plant at Kutralam in Tamil Nadu to produce 3,000 normal cubic metres per hour of helium from natural gas.

Poland, Russia, China. Algeria and Netherlands separate helium commercially from natural gas; helium is present in their oil fields at concentrations ranging from 0.18% and 0.9% volume. In some US oilfields helium is present at 8 vol%.

The US government has accumulated so far a reserve of 110m standard cubic metres of this precious resource. In 1996,  US Congress decided to liquidate it by 2005 in such a way as to cause minimum market disruption.
A report from the National Academy of Sciences prepared on a direction from Congress assured that such a disposal of helium reserves will not have substantial adverse impact on US scientific, technical, biomedical, or national security interests.

Price rises upward of 50% in the last year
But the US committee’s assurance on price stability through 2010 has gone wrong. The price of liquid helium is about $5/l; it rose more than 50% during the last year. The vagaries of the market place can hurt any dependent country. India’s decision to operate an indigenous plant to extract helium is strategically sound even if indigenous helium may turn out to be costlier than imported helium.

Helium is an inert, light gas with a range of unique properties that make it critical for science and engineering applications. It is used as a cryogen in research, medical and space industries and for inerting and leak detection in engineering. By far the greatest use currently is in MRI scanners for cooling their superconducting magnets.
Worldwide demand for helium is growing dramatically as high tech industries develop new applications dependent on helium. On current estimates, experts predict that global consumption of circa 75tpd may only be possible for a few decades.

What prompted the UK study
Richard Clarke of the UKAEA said: "Because helium is inextricably tied with natural gas reserves it seems inevitable that the world will run low of this rare gas, it is just a matter of when this will happen. The purpose of this project is to help us understand if and how the use of our helium resources can be sustained so that present consumption does not leave us short in the future."

 "While of significance to a range of industries, the findings will have particular relevance to fusion energy research where liquid helium is used extensively. As progress is made towards a working reactor, decisions will have to be made about what role helium will have in fusion power stations. Doing the work now to anticipate what will be needed in ten to twenty years is crucial. Already we have technological solutions on the horizon that could potentially reduce fusion's dependence on helium. We need a basis for deciding a programme to put resources into these, so that new technologies are developed and accepted."

Nick Ward, BOC business manager helium and special products said: "As a global provider of helium to some of the world's major users, BOC's objective is to ensure a secure supply for our customers well into the future. While BOC is constantly working with our customers to understand and predict their future needs, strategic planning for helium dependent industries requires a broader understanding of this resource, the relevant technology being developed around it and the full dynamics of the helium market. Sustaining a global supply of helium is, without a doubt, vital for helium dependent industries. BOC believes this project will advance our understanding and pave the way for new market and technological opportunities."

The three year project to 2009
The Project, A Study of Global Helium Resources, is being undertaken by PhD student Zhiming Cai, supervised by Dr William Nuttall (Judge Business School) and Dr Bartek Glowacki (Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy), University of Cambridge.

Nuttall said: "Helium is a finite resource, yet few people have worried about its long-term availability. Perhaps the foreseeable future will be characterised by a widespread abundance of helium - we aim to investigate such possibilities. Looking further ahead helium is likely to play a special role in future energy and transport systems: for instance as a heat transfer medium in many types of power station, as a cryogen associated with the hydrogen economy, or as a lift gas for more sustainable modes of air transport.

"These demands will follow from the world's need to move away from fossil fuels for environmental and energy security reasons. It is then that a difficulty will surely arise because helium is a by-product of fossil fuel extraction. Without a fossil fuel industry - will we have sufficient affordable helium? When will the world tip from abundance to scarcity?"

From the Department of Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, Dr. Bartek Glowacki said "The development and characterisation of metallic and magnesium di-boride (MgB2) superconductors in our research labs across Europe for MRI and future Fusion projects requires everyday use of liquid helium. But the problem is that, after evaporation, it is not often economic for universities and R&D establishments to recover helium. We have to look at this case and possibly develop alternative technologies."

• Helium's unique properties such as the lowest boiling point of all elements (-268.9C) high thermal conductivity, non-flammability, low molecular weight, non-reactivity, and high diffusivity make it suitable for various applications ranging from leak detection for pressurised systems and vessels to supply air in divers' breathing apparatus.

• By far the greatest use currently is in MRI scanners where helium is also the only material capable of reaching the very low temperatures needed for the MRI's superconducting magnets. Helium is also a vital resource in the ongoing study of nuclear fusion. At Joint European Torus, [Culham, Oxfordshire, UK], the world's largest nuclear fusion research experiment, liquid helium is used for cooling pump divertors and neutral beam cryopumps and diagnostics equipment.

•  Helium is a non-renewable resource that accumulates in the atmosphere (5.2ppm by volume) through radioactive decay of heavy elements within the earth's crust and is exclusively extracted during natural gas refining. Commercial production of purified compressed helium gas is concentrated in just seven countries: the USA, Poland, Qatar, Algeria, Russia, China and Australia. From here it is supplied in liquid form to distribution centres across the world in large cryogenic containers for on-filling into liquid containers, gas cylinders and cylinder packs.
  
  Sources: http://www.bloggingstocks.com
  http://www.tribuneindia.com/
  http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/news/press_releases/2006/060613_helium.html