NEW analysis of a gargantuan helium deposit discovered in Tanzania last year has revealed that there may be much more of the gas than initial surveys revealed.
At the time, the find, called
“life-saving,” was estimated to contain at least 54 billion cubic feet
(1.5 billion cubic metres). Now, according to new measurements taken of
the helium, there could be a lot more than that - around 98.6 billion
cubic feet, according to Thomas Abraham-James, CEO of helium company
Helium One.
“It’s pretty much doubled in size,” he
told Live Science. The global helium shortage affects a lot more than
blimps and party balloons. Helium is used to cool the magnetic resonance
magnets in MRI machines, and it’s also used as a coolant for nuclear
magnetic resonance and at the Large Hadron Collider.
The US’s National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA) uses it in rocket fuel, and it is also used as a
carrier gas in gas chromatography and mass spectroscopy.
The new estimates were based on new,
real-time measurements taken by University of Oxford geologists Peter
Barry and Chris Ballentine in late 2016. The field-sampling methods used
in 2015 for the initial estimate allowed air into the sample, so the
density of helium showed as much lower than it should have.
“Detailed macroseep gas compositions ...
shows the deep gas to contain between 8-10 percent helium,
significantly increasing resource estimates based on uncorrected
values,” Barry and Ballentine wrote in the abstract of a paper they
presented in August at the 2017 Goldschmidt Conference.
The initial samples contained an average
of 2.6 percent helium. For those, the samples were collected in the
field and taken back to laboratory for analysis. By comparison, for last
year’s survey, Barry and Ballentine used a portable mass spectrometer.
“We made probably 50 measurements out
there in the field, and we saw up to four times as much helium in these
samples,” Barry said.
“So this was really exciting for us,
because we were able to show quite convincingly that there’s a lot more
helium than we originally assessed.” The deposit found last year could
turn things around - not just because of its size, but how it was found.
The research team found that volcanic
activity releases helium trapped deep underground into shallower pockets
closer to the Earth’s surface.
Armed with this information, they went
looking for a helium deposit - and found it. At the time the discovery
was announced, Ballentine said that 54 billion cubic feet was enough to
fill 1.2 million MRI machines.
The new estimate of 98.6 billion cubic
feet could fill 2.2 million. And, according to Abraham- James, that
estimate is conservative. “We are probably still somewhat understating
what is present, but nevertheless, that gives us room to update and
improve as we progress,” he said.
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