Helium shortage affects more than balloons

A global shortage of helium is threatening the business, scientific and high-tech sectors that rely on the gas. Although most commonly known for inflating party balloons and making one's voice sound like a chipmunk, helium is used in airbags, MRI machines and in semiconductor production.

"Helium is a non-renewable element which means it cannot be made by man. The helium we use comes from radioactive decay of uranium or thorium hundreds of millions of years ago that was trapped in the ground," said William Halperin, a physics professor at Northwestern University. "We extract it from natural gas mined to serve the energy market."

Sophia Hayes, a chemistry professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said there are three major suppliers of helium in the world — Algeria, Qatar and the United States.

Phil Kornbluth, an industry consultant in Bridgewater, New Jersey, said the main cause of the helium shortage is depletion and declining production from existing sources, most notably the US Federal Helium Reserve, which is no longer able to deliver the desired quantity of crude helium feedgas to four helium refining facilities that are connected via pipeline to the reserve.

"Besides the declining production from US sources, the two helium plants in Algeria are also producing well below their capacity. New sources are under development, but they were not ready to commence production soon enough to avoid a shortage," he said.

"There is a lot of uncertainty in the market at the moment because of the congressionally mandated shutdown of the US helium reserve," said Hayes. The reserve is set to shut down in 2021, after Congress decided to get out of the business.

The Chinese market accounts for at least 700 million cubic feet of the total worldwide demand, which is estimated to be around 6.2 billion cubic feet, according to Kornbluth.

"China represents at least 11 percent of global demand (and) is the second-largest market after the US, and it has been the world's fastest-growing market in recent years," he said. "Chinese helium consumers have experienced sharply higher prices and supply allocations, similar to consumers elsewhere in the world."

Most of the helium sold in China comes from Australia, Qatar and the US.

"China does not have significant domestic production," Kornbluth said.

Helium gas is inert or non-reactive, so it can be used in a variety of applications where helium gas is used for processing, Hayes said.

"(It) is used in manufacturing semiconductors and semiconductor devices, optical fibers, and also used in welding and gas/leak testing," she said. "Liquid helium is a very cold substance (and) is used to cool the special materials in MRI machines and their chemistry counterparts called NMR instruments (that is) used to determine the structure of chemicals in (the) pharmaceutical and chemical industries."

Liquid helium is also crucial for the development and discovery of properties of new materials such as special states of magnetism, and future plans for new technology like quantum computing, added Hayes.

There is one possible solution to the helium shortage that China and the US could work on together, according to Hayes.

"We are trying to encourage the recycling of helium by users who can recapture the gas. This is technically demanding, and there is a capital-equipment expense associated. We are urging people worldwide to adopt recycling practices and technologies and in the US to find funds for researchers and others to do that," said Hayes.