Helium and its practical uses "EMPOWER IAS"

In news:

• India imports helium for its needs and with the U.S. appearing set to cut off exports of helium since 2021, the Indian industry stands to lose out heavily.

About Helium

• Helium is the second-lightest and second most common element in the universe after hydrogen gas.
• Helium belongs to the group of noble gases that occupy the far right hand side of the periodic table.
• It is the most unreactive (inert) element in the periodic table.
• Low chemical reactivity is due to a stable electron arrangement (filled outer shell of electrons).

 

Helium on Earth

• Helium is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2.
• It is a colourless, odourless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas, the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. Its boiling point is the lowest among all the elements.

 

Its discovery

• In 1906 a young Englishman by the name of Moris Travers arrived in Bangalore, to take up the position of the Director of Indian Institute of Science.
• Travers extracted helium in small quantity by heating up monazite sand abundantly available in Kerala beach, in a pioneering effort.
• Dutch physicist Kamerlingh Onnes liquefied Helium by cooling the gas to -270 degrees Celsius.
• It is known that Onnes collected helium gas from the springs of Bath in Baden Baden, Germany for his liquefaction experiment.

 

Helium in India

• India’s Rajmahal volcanic basin is the storehouse of helium trapped for billions of years, since the very birth of our Earth from the Sun.
• At present, researchers are mapping the Rajmahal basin extensively for future exploration and harnessing of helium.

 

Why India needs Helium?

• Every year, India imports helium worth Rs 55,000 crores from the U.S. to meet its needs.
• Helium is used in medicine, scientific research, for blimp inflation, party balloons as well as having welding applications.
• It finds many applications, mainly in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, in rockets and in nuclear reactors.
• US monopoly in Helium
• The U.S. became the most important exporter of helium across the world.
• It was soon realized that the U.S. was also the biggest storehouse of helium.
• The US is now planning to switch off the export of helium from 2021.
• Qatar is a possible exporter but acute political and diplomatic wrangles have made Qatar unreliable.

 

Important properties of Helium

• Helium is a very stable element being chemically inert and nonreactive.
• It is nonflammable and nonpoisonous.
• Most importantly, it boils at 4.2 Kelvin, or minus 268 degrees Celsius which is the lowest temperature possible in the universe.
• No other element can remain a liquid at these temperatures.