Helium? Do you mean the waste product of a fusion reactor?
Puleeese Peter, give it a rest.
I would think that Aire Liquide would have a ceramic that would seperate it out. Probably can’t get the volume needed though.
There are only eight wells in the US that produce Helium and I cannot figure out why Congress decided to open up sales. It just does not make a whole lot of sense because it is definitely a national security material.
Anyone have some insight into this?
What an idiot. Helium is cryogenically distilled from natural gas.
“I would think that Aire Liquide would have a ceramic that would seperate it out.”
Should read “I would think that Aire Liquide would have a ceramic filter that would seperate it out.”
Right. Thanks for playing, Mr. “Academic.” Now, get off the stage, and no... Johnny Olsen doesn’t have a parting gift for you.
Let the free market decide. If demand for helium is so strong, the price will go up accordingly. And while someone with a medical need will pay whatever’s charged, no one — except maybe a limousine liberal — will pay $95 for a party balloon.
This guy doesn’t understand economics. The more uses for something the cheaper and more available it gets. Aluminum was one of the most expensive and rare elements on the planet until the government decided it wanted lightning rods on public buildings to be made from aluminum. (This was, at the time, like ordering lightning rods made from gold.) This created a market and chemists immediately invented processes to produce material to fill that market. Unlike gold, aluminum is the most common metal in the Earth’s crust. Market/use = cheap/abundance.
This man’s thinking is typically liberal. If you use something you use it up; therefore it must be regulated by the government. In reality, the more you use something the more there is of it. Take oil. In 1960 alarmists said we’d be completely out of oil by 1970. In 1970 there were more reserves known than in 1960. So, they moved the date to 1980, then 1990, then 2000. Each decade saw more known reserves. Now, we know that oil is produced by biological processes near the earth’s core, not fossil bones (see link below.) Even if that weren’t the case, a market for oil would mean somebody would invent a process to come up with oil. (The Nazis did; coal to oil.)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/35642397/Abiotic-Deep-Source-Oil-Gas-Mantel
It is a serious issue.
[in a high, squeaky voice] “No, you can’t do that!”
Parties, too. Ban parties.
And happiness. Ban happiness.
People. Ban people.
I went to buy balloons for a birthday party and was told they (Safeway) no longer have them, because the US government controls all helium and is restricting supplies.
The clerk said it is just to complicated to buy the gas, so they stopped (at that store at least).
That was thirty five years ago.
“Kids; how many times have I said to keep the balloons AWAY from the candles on the birthday cake”
Same type of moron that thinks we are using up all the water.
I agree with the author that Helium should not be frittered away. Helium is so rare that wasn’t even discovered on Earth until 1905 and for all its seeming abundance now, it is actually a scarce, irreplaceable strategic resource used in high-tech manufacturing.
Helium is all around you in the air you breath right now & since its a “Noble Gas “ it doesn’t combine chemically with any other element. you can’t destroy it the article is scaremongering.