[Ographer]

The issue is mostly with our refining capabilities. Helium is mixed with natural gas as it travels from wells to compressor stations which push it down the pipeline to the refinery for separation. There are only 14 refineries in the world set up to capture helium, half of which are in the United States.

Building new refineries can take decades and is extremely expensive. The refinery and wells also must be located near radioactive reserves which decay and produce the helium.

You're absolutely right about party balloons not being an existential threat. There are two types of Helium for commercial sale: balloon-grade and Ultra High Purity Grade. Balloon grade Helium is used strictly for balloons and is not adequate to be used as a shielding gas or in any medical capacity. Ultra High Purity Grade has undergone the scrubbing process after extraction, and is safe for welding, industrial and medical applications.

[altacc]

The idea of "balloon-grade" led me down a rabbit hole. It seems that there are many defined grades of He with the majority being grade 5 (99.999% purity, 2 steps down from the purest) and the majority of He used, including in balloons is grade 5 due to ease of transporting just one grade. That made it cheaper to use grade 5 for party balloons than artificially reducing the quality.

In the last few years there has been more low quality balloon grade (97.5% purity) produced by refineries in the US, increasing the availability and reducing the cost.

http://www.kornbluthheliumconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/... https://zephyrsolutions.com/what-are-the-different-grades-of...

[PaulHoule]

Couldn't you just buy high purity helium and mix in some air close to the point of sale?

[foota]

Isn't the resource being consumed the same though? I imagine ultra high grade is just more refined? Or is the balloon grade gas not economically refinable to the pure gas?

[simcop2387]

Not just non-economical, but like almost all purification processes you will be producing balloon grade from the production of the ultra pure gas. Intrinsicly there will be helium that you can't separate from the other gasses that you removed from the helium.