Good bye, Helium...
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A common mix is 21/35 (21% Oxygen, 35% Helium, the remainder almost entirely Nitrogen). Divers often use such mixes for dives in the 165 foot range. At that depth, a fit diver consumes a little over three cubic feet of gas per minute, which means that a little over one cubic foot of Helium is lost forever into the atmosphere each minute per diver.
An alternative is a closed-circuit or rebreather system, where the exhaust gas is scrubbed of carbon dioxide and fresh oxygen added to replace the oxygen metabolized by the diver. Such systems are far more complicated, more expensive, and require much more training to dive safely.
But one of the advantages of closed-circuit diving is that the inert gases (including Helium) are not exhausted with every breath. Therefore, it doesn't matter how many minutes a dive takes, Helium is not being exhausted into the water with every breath. This makes for a substantial savings in cost per dive and saves a non-renewable resource.
As Helium prices rise, I hop there will be an economic incentive for divers to take up closed-circuit diving, which will in turn lead to the development of simpler, cheaper and safer systems.
In the long run I expect we'll end up with more semi-closed systems. They're a little less efficient but inherently safer. Something like this http://www.halcyon.net/?q=node/44 could probably be mass produced at a reasonable price (expensive now due to custom manufacturing).
I never know what to think of these things, given that we have been "running out of oil" since the late 1970's. I suspect, just as with oil, that there is no economic incentive for anyone to go looking for new supply while the price is so low. Once it gets high enough, someone is going to figure out some crazy way to extract it.
"Peak Oil: Celebrating 100 Years!"
Unless I'm missing something, those estimates are consistent, both ending in 2025.
[1]: Energy Information Administration, part of the US Department of Energy.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PE...
Here's a graph of proven reserves for US offshore oil: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PE...
And here's one for US total proven reserves: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PE...
It looks like US reserve growth is declining even when accounting for all the offshore stuff discovered in the last 30 years. So we're not finding as much as we used to.
Edit: Sorry, I misread your question at first. "Peak oil" refers to peak production. We know we passed this in the continental US in 1971. That's only knowable after the fact, of course.
From what I've read about the peak oil phenomenon, it seems like sort of a coincidence that peak production happens around the same time half the oil in an oil well (or oil field, or oil producing region) is exhausted. So that's how people try to predict future peak oil events.
The problem is that proven reserves are a moving target. (Though we know the growth of reserves is trending down for the US.) And it's harder still to know much about the rest of the world's reserves since oil reserves are regarded by many nations as state secrets.
Right now a 500 L dewar of liquid He costs about $500 USD. (more for some locations in EU) You can already buy regenerators that capture the boiled off LHe and this can save a good amount of money with some suppliers. If Helium becomes more scarce this type of technology will become much more common.
A larger concern is the scarcity of He3 - This has become very expensive in Europe due to the US's crazy ambition to install thousands of He3 based detectors for people smuggling nuclear bombs into the USA. See http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2549/he-3-and-homeland-securi... for more info. Like other posters I don't understand why the Russians don't step up!
I guess I should have kept the tank and retired after purchasing a private island in the Caribbean...
I was half-expecting the turn-filter-on (or off) available in some of the neater e-commerce sites ...
Sadly, technology goes by leaps and bounds, subject to the winds of politics and economics.
It's not impossible that, 12 years from now, we will be living in a post-societal-collapse agrarian society and our achievements will be little more than legends.
No. Not that bad, but you get the idea.
Well, I guess that's one way to match the demand and supply of helium.
sigh.
If wikipedia is to be believed "rich" is relative here and corresponds to 0.01 ppm. He-4 is slightly better at 28 ppm. However as He-4 is 5ppm [2] of the atmosphere here on Earth the Moon seems a long way to go to achieve just a 6-fold enrichment.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Composition
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1550246/Russia-see...
Helium is also created by hydrogen fusing in the sun and being blown out on the solar wind.
Right now we get helium by distilling it out of natural gas, which means that we only tap a tiny fraction of what's actually present on and in the planet. And although right now we're using helium faster than we can extract it from the dwindling supply of natural gas, that doesn't preclude the development of other methods and sources in the future (and, once the supply is low enough and the demand is high enough, somebody will put up the money to figure it out).
I work for a company that makes it more efficient and safer to throw away natural gas. It's nowhere near as rare as you think, in fact, in drilling, it's considered a nuisance more than a product of the well. It's like saying we have a dwindling supply of mud.
At one point, oil companies actually gave it away for free.
Currently the easiest way to get it is as a byproduct of natural gas drilling. But the planet has been outgassing it for, geologically, a very long time. The low hanging fruit might be running low but if there is a demand it for then there will be someone willing to sell it to you.
If we'd sat on it for a few more decades, we would have been in much better shape (and our scientific industry would have benefited relative to the rest of the world), but the opportunity to do so has probably passed.
So i think this is different from oil where oil can't really be produced.
I'm not saying we should crap all of our helium away, but I'm having a hard time being concerned about something that we can at least hypothetically produce.
Also, more on deep earth nuclear reactors: http://www.pnas.org/content/98/20/11085.full
"In the Earth's heterosphere, a part of the upper atmosphere, helium and other lighter gases are the most abundant elements."
"In this way an estimated 3000 metric tons of helium are generated per year throughout the lithosphere."
And as both Wiki and the article points out, the biggest "reserve" is found in natural gas - which Europe, with Russia in particular, has vast abundances of. Not sure with what concentration our European gas deposits hold Helium, though.
I'm not sure which source to trust here on the topic of Helium being this rare.
And 3000 tons per year is not that much given that Wikipedia says "2008 world helium total production of about 32 million kg helium", ie 32000 metric tons. In other words, demand exceeds production by a factor of 10, even if (and that's a big if) all of the He in the lithosphere could be captured.
No, I think the solution is to go to Jupiter and scoop up a huge load of it (gotta be Jupiter, Saturn's atmosphere is deficient in He). And given that we need it for spaceflight, better do it before we use it all up!