Helium-What About It?

Abstract

TO THE MAN in the street the word "helium" conjures up toy balloons on a midway or a picture of the Goodyear blimp hovering over a televised football game or professional golf match, and there, unfortunately, for most of us the interest ceases. This lack of interest stems not from lack of curiosity but rather a breakdown in communication. The fact that the earth's atmosphere contains a constant five parts per million of a monatomic, colourless, non-toxic, inert gas does not now arouse much, if any, public comment but will be of considerable importance to our descendants two or three generations down the road when all of the world's natural gas has been consumed along with the entrapped helium. The commercial source of helium is natural gas contaminated with helium resulting from radioactive disintegration processes occurring in the earth's crust over billions of years. The helium so formed diffuses through the porous crust into gas fields and into the atmosphere from which it is continuously lost to outer space(1). Canadian efforts in regard to the harnessing and marketing of helium really began in 1917 when, under the need to obtain helium in quantity to fill airships and balloons during World War I, Professor J.E. McLennan of the University of Toronto surveyed most of the Canadian producing gas fields. There were only two places where an extraction plant might be established: at Hamilton, Ontario and Calgary. Alberta. In 1918 a small experimental plant was set up near Hamilton. Although quite pure helium could be obtained, the gas supply was insufficient for continuous operation. A short while later the plant was therefore brought to Calgary to process gas from the Bow Island field. From December 1, 1919 to April 17, 1920 a series of trial runs produced a total of about sixty thousand cubic feet of helium of 60% to 90% purity. The plant was closed when further financial support was not forthcoming(2). Nothing further occurred until the discovery of a natural gas field in Saskatchewan containing 1.9% helium. 1.5% carbon dioxide and 96% nitrogen by the British American Oil Company (later Gulf Canada). This company joined with the bottled gas distributors British Oxygen Limited of England and L' Air Liquide of France to build an extraction plant. The plant was built in 1964 under the name of Canadian Helium Limited some nine miles north of Swift Current, Saskatchewan, with an original capacity of twelve million cubic feet of grade A (99.995% pure) helium per year which was soon to be expanded to thirty-six million cubic feet per year. The production exceeded Canadian needs and most of it was exported to western Europe. Reserves estimates, thought to be sufficient to last into the 1990s proved fallible and the plant closed down in mid-1977, leaving Canada without an indigenous supply of helium, a condition which still exists.