I fail to see the argument here, Neon is readily within peoples price range and is almost exclusively provided by cryogenic fractal distillation. It costs approximately $33/100g and helium presently costs $5.2/100g. Considering the existing neon producers will only have to modify their equipment slightly I doubt the price of helium would ever surpass the price of neon in the foreseeable future.
You can extract argon from air to do most of what helium is used for. It's completely inert and liquefies at 87K. Pure argon gas costs $5 a kilo. Liquid nitrogen and carbon dioxide will cover most of the rest of the applications and are much cheaper.
Neon from air is much more expensive at $300 a kilo. That's because Neon is at a low concentration similar to helium. Helium can be extracted for about the same price as neon, so we're not in danger of ever running out. Helium is a renewable resource that leaks out of the Earth's crust and regenerates from solar wind constantly, contrary to op.
It's only extremely cheap helium that will run out, and most of the supplies in the world are still underground in natural gas reserves. There are generations of cheap helium left.
We can produce more of it by distilling it out of the atmosphere, it is just rather expensive.
This is exclusively how neon is produced (as far as I can find) so it is obviously economically viable at a certain price.
I did a calculation once about nuclear production of helium and found that the heat from the nuclear reactors producing enough helium to match current usage would be on the same order of magnitude as the power received from the sun across the whole planet.
Not just price, but density is the reason. The next noble gas up is neon, which is quite scarce and more expensive than helium, and denser anyways. After that it's argon, which is cheap and plentiful, but about ten times denser, so it's not nearly as good as helium.
This might be painful for scientists to hear but they actually _need_ helium prices to rise (No pun intended). It's the best way to make sure the substance isn't wasted.
Yes, that's how you could do it by modifying liquefaction plants that can produce Neon. In theory, you could take the leftovers after separating out Neon and you'd have a small amount of Helium. As I mentioned, at 5 ppm that doesn't give you much Helium, and you still need to purify it.
This may make me sound like a jerk, and perhaps I am, but:
Helium is only a finite resource at this price point. We could extract harder to get to reserves, or even make our own by fusioning hydrogen, if the price was high enough.
There is lots of it now, so the market price is low. The reason that this is a problem is that compared to other raw materials like oil, there is basically nothing that can be used as an acceptable substitute for helium in its scientific/industrial uses. Also, the prospects for finding new helium reserves is much lower than for many other materials.
As a noble gas, helium can't be synthesized, so its cost is because of its scarcity— and because it's a small molecule (like hydrogen), you inevitably lose some and require continuous top-ups.
None of this sounds like it would be realistic at scale, no matter the amount of money in play.
On helium rarity: helium can easily be produced by nuclear reaction. That's expensive, of course. But if we raise the price of helium to prevent depletion of resources, helium will be expensive too.
Given we have a way to make it, we aren't going to run out of the stuff, so I just don't think this problem is that dire.
Yeah this is completely misleading. How the fuck do you they think they got neon? The only way you can get it is from from the atmosphere. Helium occurs in similar concentrations and maintains the same level overtime due the radioactive decay. Actually it's probably increased due to natural gas extraction. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1984GeCoA..48.1759O/abstra...
This is not a serious problem but prices will increase after the current spike.. Neon is in the atmosphere, it is a noble gas and does not form compounds under atmospheric conditions and exists at about 18 ppm in the atmosphere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon#Production
Ukraine liquid oxygen production for steel makes byproduct neon. China also makes it
We won't run out of helium, it will just become much more expensive, like neon. You can distill helium out of the atmosphere, but it's a few orders of magnitude more expensive than separating from natural gas, which will remain a source for a very long time.
Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe, wherever it is to be found, we'll find it.
It just won't be very affordable for birthday parties.
You don't really need much helium for what it's used for, it could work - prices would go up, but we wouldn't run out.
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