Highlands Helium Reserve!7 Dec 2018 21:13
With Highlands having a Helium Resource in South East Montana with an Acreage Postion of 220,000 acres and a conformation of 0.33% in gas samples plus with Helium getting more scarce and prices increasing rapidly I’m thinking how Highlands will take forward, found a company looking for Helium Reserves just north of the boarder of Montana in Canada and the 2 point in the company’s website with the Separation of Helium is one that Highlands are performing in Kansas already with the Pressure Swing Absorption Plant skills and experience being gained already for this!
Specialized expertise and methods across multiple disciplines are required to effectively search for new helium fields.
Once a commercially viable helium reserve has been discovered and development wells have been drilled, there are two stages in the production of helium, which can be combined into a single plant for larger deposits of helium.
Helium Separation/Purification
Because even 0.35% helium in a bulk-gas is considered a high-concentration, the first step is to separate the helium from the other components of the bulk gas stream. This can be accomplished through three principal technologies, which are often combined depending on the composition of the gas stream.
1.Membrane Separation
The helium content of a gas can be upgraded or purified by using high-pressure membranes which either concentrate or purify helium through selective diffusion of relatively smaller gas molecules through microscopic pores in the medium. This technology is relatively new for helium separation applications and may not be suitable for longer-lifetime projects.
2.PSA or TSA Pressure-Swing Adsorption (PSA) or Temperature-Swing Adsorption (TSA).
These technologies use temperature or pressure to cause selective adsorption of different sized gas molecules into a medium with a large surface area consisting of uniformly sized pore spaces. These technologies are time-tested, reliable, and can be deployed at small scale. The downside is that this process is less efficient than cryogenic separation, in terms of both energy use and product losses during the process.
3.Cryogenic Separation
Similar to the air separation units (ASUs) that are deployed worldwide in the industrial gas business, this technology uses low temperatures to cause different gases to condense off as a liquid in a fractionation tower. This process is ideally suited to helium, which has the lowest condensation point of any gas, but requires large scale for efficiency and has a higher initial capital cost.
https://nahelium.com/about-helium/helium-production/