How can you make helium?

Answer 1

Helium is an element. That means you can't make it from other things. An element is what other things are made of.

Some other elements are oxygen, carbon, iron, and silver. They can't be broken down into other materials.

Helium can be separated from air, where it is naturally found (although in pretty low concentrations).

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See the Web Links to the left for more information about helium.

Helium is formed during nuclear fusion reactions and is found in large quantities dissolved in underground gas - you can't manufacture it any other way.

Helium is mostly formed by alpha decay, a type of radioactive decay. The elements emit a helium nucleus and 2 electrons come with it.

Answer 2

Helium is made in stars by the process of atomic fusion of hydrogen.
A lot of helium comes from alpha-decay of radioactive materials. When certain radioactive materials decay, they produce alpha-particles (two protons bound with two neutrons). Free alpha particles quickly pick up a pair of electrons to become a proper helium atom.

Answer 3

Through a process called "The Siemens Cycle," the gas is put through a cycle which continually cools it. The process can work on most gasses.

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Compression
* causes it to also heat up, allow removal of more energy.

Cooling
* via a cooler similar to a freezer)

Heat exchanger
* Where it is cooled further by exchanging heat with the output of the expansion step.

Expansion
* Gas is allowed to expand via an expansion machine
* The expansion causes the gas to cool further.

Passes back through the heat-exchanger
* Cooling the incoming gas more.
* This causes the cycle to continually get colder.

Returns to step 1 to be re-compressed.
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In the case of helium, once the Siemens Cycle has gotten it cold enough, it is moved to a similar process, called "The Hampson-Linde Cycle." The only difference being the method of expansion in step 4. However, the Hampson-Lind cycle allows for colder temperatures.

(see link for greater detail)

PS: sorry about the list formatting, but the list WYSIWYG gets it all messed up.

Answer 4

• Most of the global reserves of helium lie in Qatar, Algeria, the USA and Russia.
• There are two stages for isolation and production of helium from natural gas:
  • At stage one, the process of low-temperature condensation produces helium concentrate. The volume share of the target substance is at least 80 per cent in the product.
  • Further on, helium concentrate gets cleaned from impurities - methane, nitrogen, hydrogen, neon and argon

Answer 5

To get helium use fractional distillation of liquid air and it is also obtained from some oil fields in the USA especially.

Answer 6

You can use helium for inflating a balloon and letting it float.

Answer 7

Helium is obtained by separation from methane followed by purification.