HELIUM WASTED

Grey River Argus, 14 August 1937, Page 6

HELIUM WASTED

SUPPLY IN ALBERTA. Waste of one of the world’s richest, natural resources goes on endlessly in the petroleum oil fields of southern Alberta, where close to 3,000,000 cubic feet •of natural gas containing approximately 1,000,000 cubic feet of helium goes up daily in smoke from the great flares beside the oil wells in Turner Valley, says the “Christian Science Monitor.” Enough of this valuable gas is. wasted in one _week in the Turner Valley to fill the gasbags of the Hindenburg. Apart from comparatively small amounts sold to small Alberta towns for heating and other purposes, the waste gas in Alberta has no market, and so it is burned into the air near the oil wells. It has been proved that there is one-third of 1 per cent, helium in the natural gas of Alberta, and it has been separated for experimental purposes with success. During the war the Imperial authorities carried on experiments to find what helium content there was in the Alberta natural gas, and just when it was about to be produced to commercial quantities the war ended and nothing has been done about it since.

Production was proved feasible in 1917 by the experiments of Professor E. F. Burton of Toronto University who is still at that, institution, and by tne late Sir John McLennan, for the British Admiralty. Helium produced in Toronto in 1917 and 1918 is still being used in the Toronto University laboratories in low-temperature work.

In discussing the waste of helium gas at Turner Valley, near Calgary Professor R. J. Lang, of the Department of Physics at the University of.i Alberta, some few years ago calculated that every million feet of natural gas wasted in Turner Valley contains 2000 cubic feet of helium. At present a small amount of Albert? helium is used for experimental work at the institution, costing £5 per litre at regular market price, roughly a quart, measured in gaseous form and at atmospheric pressure. Consequently about £280,000 is- the value of the helium wasted with each 1,000,000 cubic feet of gas. The price of £5 a litre is exorbitant, but fit is nothing to what it will be when’the supply of this valuable gas content has been dissipated in time. The helium content of natural gas on the North American Continent, is said by scientists to decline from about 3 per cent, in Texas to 0.3 per cent, in Southern Alberta and 0.1 per cent, around Edmonton.

While this criminal wastage of this unique product goes on, it should be remembered that the process for the separation of helium from natural gas has already been perfected in Canada, and in connection with this very gas in the Turner Valley by the Imperial Government. The final estimates of the cost of the process is around 25 cents per cubic foot of helium.