this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
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370
"A dream. It's perfect": Helium discovery in northern Minnesota may be biggest ever in North America (www.cbsnews.com)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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"A dream. It's perfect": Helium discovery in northern Minnesota may be biggest ever in North America::For a century, the U.S. Government-owned the largest helium reserve in the country, but the biggest exporters now are in Russia, Qatar and Tanzania. With this new discovery, Minnesota could be joining that list.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

helium just boils off in MRI/NMR machines, this is the major use of helium i think. if you could recycle that in machines that already are out there, that would solve lots of problems. there are newer systems that do not require cryogens or just require liquid nitrogen which is much cheaper and less energy intensive. these things use closed loop refrigeration, but in turn you need to supply them with power

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like superconductor research could end up fixing that problem. Once we have a suitable conductor material, you no longer need to keep it that cool.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

not exactly, because if someone finds out that high temperature superconductor works even better at 4K, then it will be running at 4K, making entire thing more compact or allowing for higher fields