Posted on 01/26/2024 6:15:56 AM PST by logi_cal869
On Thursday, the U.S. government sold the Federal Helium Reserve, a massive underground stockpile based in Amarillo, Texas, that supplies up to 30% of the country’s helium.
Once the deal is finalized, the buyer — which will likely be the highest bidder, the industrial gas company Messer — will claim some 425 miles of pipelines spanning Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma, plus about 1 billion cubic feet of the only element on Earth cold enough to make an MRI machine work.
Regulatory and logistical issues with the facility threaten a temporary shutdown as it passes from public to private ownership, and hospital supply chain experts worry the sale could have serious consequences for health care down the road — especially when it comes to MRIs.
To be sure, a Federal Helium Reserve shutdown wouldn’t mean that MRIs would suddenly power down across the country, said Soumi Saha, senior vice president of government affairs at Premier Inc., which contracts with helium suppliers on behalf of 4,400 hospitals in the U.S. “But we are stressing about this shortage. From a health care perspective, MRI machines are the No. 1 concern.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Considering how inept the federal government is, the helium might be better managed by a private company.
Concur. I feel like I’ve been given the answer without knowing the question. Maybe the infrastructure is the value. I don’t know, but when the govt “sells” something without discussion, then my default is “who just made a fortune.”
Helium is also used to pressurize liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen on launch vehicles. The aerospace industry is concerned about this development as well.
This is how they upset the apple cart to sow confusion. Biden needs to be tried for treason, period.
ok i am not in the industry. anyhow i believe helium is used in raptor spinup (this may or may not conflict with what you stated). i believe that sometimes an inert gas is needed for differential pressure reasons in valves. one side of the valve is kept filled with higher pressure liquid helium. the other side is a reactive liquid (eg methane or oxygen). this allows the valve seals to work to contain the reactive liquid(s). this is for full-flow staged-combustion-cycle engines. i believe russian full-flow staged-combustion-cycle engines might also use helium. basically spacex expanded on russian full-flow staged-combustion-cycle technology including valve seals. you may be able to comment. i read something about it a couple of years ago, but i cannot recall exactly where nor can i recall particulars.
1. Foreign (German) political donations. 2. Help pay off a part of Biden’s deficit spending.
The Biden Crime Family...???
no more helium gas?
this is NOT a laughing matter!
I can't find the link right now; but a source, states that I.G. Farben plants weren't bombed by either side during WWII.
How the once-huge chemical/pharmaceutical company IG Farben actually profited off the Holocaust
CATEGORIES: 1940S, AMERICAN WAR HISTORY, TRUE CRIME & VINTAGE CRIMINALS, VINTAGE NEWSPAPERS
Ah, big gubmint and corporate welfare are okay as long as you get a benefit.
*
Ummm...one word...Lasers
Sounds like you absorbed it pretty well. This handy temperature reference will help explain it’s uses:
Liquid Helium (LHe) has a temperature around -452F. Inert
Liquid Hydrogen (LH2) has a temperature around -423F. Extremely flammable.
Liquid Nitrogen (LN2) has a temperature around -320F. Inert
Liquid Oxygen (LOX) has a temperature around -297F. EXTREMELY Flammable. It is used as the oxidizer for other cryogenic fuels.
Liquid Methanes (there are different types) have a temperature near that of LOX.
System Purges are done with Gaseous Helium to help remove the the flammable fuels from the system. Helium is good to do that with because it’s liquid point is so low.
Also, some control valving used on the flammable cryogenic storage tanks use pressurized Helium because it introduces no electrical spark issues and will not have problem turning into liquid because it has a lower temperature.
Not a subject-matter expert in the field but have had to use LHe turn run some tests on super-cooled devices, so we had to learn about it.
Thanks.
BKMK
China needs it for their balloons.
Also used as a shielding gas for welding. Since it became scarcer, argon has been substituted for helium, but helium is probably the best for the purpose.
Hard to build warships if you can’t weld.
Why?
The pipelines.
> Also, some control valving used on the flammable cryogenic storage tanks use pressurized Helium because it introduces no electrical spark issues and will not have problem turning into liquid because it has a lower temperature.
Not only that (IIRC; IOW might be wrong) but small amounts of liquid helium (etc) can be used to replace the functionality normally represented by rubber (etc) seals on valves altogether. (rubber itself can’t be used since the temperature of liquid reactants is too cold.) the small leakage between the metal to metal contact is tolerated since helium is inert and won’t oxidize anywhere, nor will small amounts of leaked helium decrease anything such as thrust significantly. iirc this might have originally been a technique used by the russians. anyways, cool stuff (if accurate at all, i have no expertise).
It would have to be extremely low pressure seals. Helium is so light it is incredibly difficult to store. When running some of our tests, I watched helium literally flow through the metal of a non-stainless steel connection on top of the LHe Dewar.
We ran some tests on pressure transducers at -450 f. Used a Cryostat to vacuum pull Liquid helium out of the Dewar and into our Cryostat. It was amazing figuring out that the pure Gaseous Nitrogen we used in our pressure lines was liquifying and then freezing SOLID when we pulled a vacuum on our pressure lines. We ended up having to use Helium as our pressurized gas in the pressure lines so that we could obtain accurate pressure readings.
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