Helium running out!

Read-Only said:
Ahem... Wake up, Billy, I said nothing at all about HELIUM.
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Yes my dyslexia seems to be getting worse - that´s the second misreading in as many days triggered by my expectations (it is a thread on He) instead of what is printed. (ElectricFetus corrected the other one)

However, comment is still true - sparks in essentially pure H2 are not harmful either. Even more surprising is you can put a lite candle out with gasoline, but don´t try that. Gasoline does not burn (nor do wood logs until mainly hot carbon) - It is the vapor of gasoline that burns.

Not easy to dump liquid gasoline on a lite candle with no fire resulting. - It should be quite cold* and in tightly streched balloon above the candle that gets popped by pin so cold without vapor liquid quenches the candle. My point was and is that there is no fire unless O2 is available.

*Colder than your freezer can make - Again don´t try to do this without a liquid N2 bath for cooling the gasoline.
 
Billy T said:
Yes my dyslexia seems to be getting worse - that´s the second misreading in as many days triggered by my expectations (it is a thread on He) instead of what is printed. (ElectricFetus corrected the other one)

However, comment is still true - sparks in essentially pure H2 are not harmful either. Even more surprising is you can put a lite candle out with gasoline, but don´t try that. Gasoline does not burn (nor do wood logs until mainly hot carbon) - It is the vapor of gasoline that burns.

Not easy to dump liquid gasoline on a lite candle with no fire resulting. - It should be quite cold* and in tightly streched balloon above the candle that gets popped by pin so cold without vapor liquid quenches the candle. My point was and is that there is no fire unless O2 is available.

*Colder than your freezer can make - Again don´t try to do this without a liquid N2 bath for cooling the gasoline.
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An easy mistake to make. ;)

And yes, I'm well aware that there is a specific ratio range of fuel : oxidizer for every flammable gas. Above or below those limits, no amount of attempts at ignition is going to cause a reaction/explosion.

What you say of gasoline is quite true, given it's fairly high vapor pressure. And it's an interesting contrast to consider the fact that a bucket of kerosene, diesel fuel, jet aviation fuel can be safely used to extinguish a *small* fire with no drastic cooling required. Again, just a simple matter of vapor pressure at normal temperatures.
 
Billy T said:
... I think only a doubling, or certainly a tripling, of the current price, if then steady say 10% annual increase were very likely would make it attractive to speculators to build separation and storage* facilities so that some of what is now released to the air would be stored. As far as the impact on MRI medical machine cost even a 5 fold increase in the cost of He is only a very tiny fraction of the magnet cost. Lead the way to He conservation - fill He balloons at your next party!

* Storage in salt water filled salt dome structure should be cheap and every decade or so a few more could be added. It is the cost of the separation plant than is larger, but starting to cool more from LNG temperature is a help. IMHO, no LNG ship should be filled with CH4 if doing so dumped the He into the air.
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New demand and storage for helium may cut current He losses:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-13/worldwide-aeros-aims-to-turn-blimps-into-cargo-craft said:
What we’re doing is revolution,” says Pasternak, who started Worldwide Aeros in his native Ukraine and then moved the company to Los Angeles in 1993. “We’re establishing a new market.” ... The Aeroscraft could have a cargo capacity of as much as 250 tons, about three times that of the military’s C-17 transport plane.

Traditional blimps, like birthday balloons, are great at rising but not so good at returning to earth. Lacking buoyancy control, they have to be tethered by a crew after landing. The drawback makes large cargo deliveries virtually impossible: Any weight that’s offloaded has to be replaced with an equally heavy load—say, of sand or lead—for the craft to keep its equilibrium. To tackle that problem, Aeros engineers created a “variable buoyancy” system that pumps helium out of the main chamber and into lightweight compression tanks in the hull. The compressed gas makes room for the ship to take on more air, allowing for a slow descent. {It has internal collapsable bags so does not mix air with the He of the main volume. It can "take off" & land vertically with no need of a "ground crew" }

The U.S. Department of Defense has committed $60 million toward development of the Aeroscraft; that money runs out in August, leaving the company to seek private investment.
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"Aeroscraft features a rigid 70-meter skeleton made of aluminum and carbon fiber, with 365-horsepower piston engines, automatic buoyancy control systems and high-tech electronics and fuel systems. The US Department of Defense and NASA have invested $35 million in this prototype. ... In just three years’ time, Worldwide Aeros is set to construct a 137-meter-long airship – nearly twice as long as the Aeroscraft – which could fly at 220 kph, with a hefty payload of 66 tons and a range of 3,100 nautical miles (5,700 kilometers).

But over the long term, Worldwide Aeros says it could eventually build an airship capable of carrying 500 tons, with a range of 5,300 nautical miles (9,800 kilometers) – double the 250-ton payload of the world’s biggest cargo aircraft, the Antonov An-225 Mria."

Video showing some internal details here: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-13/worldwide-aeros-aims-to-turn-blimps-into-cargo-craft
 
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