A new system recovers the helium used to refrigerate scientific equipment and doctors

Researchers of the Upper Council of Scientific Investigations (CSIC), the University of Saragossa and the company GWR Instruments (United States) have developed and patented a new system for the liquefaction and recovery of helium to small and half scale. The method is able to recover 100% of the liquid helium employee in the refrigeration of scientific equipment and doctors.

The system, simple and of easy handle, has been presented today in the paraninfo of the University of Saragossa in an act chaired by the president of the CSIC, Emilio Lora-Tamayo, the adviser of Industry and Innovation of the Government of Aragon, Arturo Aliaga, and the rector of the University of Saragossa, Manuel López. “This new technician will allow to reduce the consumption of a strategic resource, limited and of high cost, that uses so much in shape liquid like gaseous in investigation, in medical equipment and in the industry, what will suppose a considerable economic saving when treating of a scarce and expensive element. Already it is substituting to the current plants of industrial recovery, very complex and that issue to the atmosphere an important part of the helium used”, has explained the coordinator of the development Conrado Rillo, researcher of the CSIC in the Institute of Science of Materials of Aragon, a mixed centre of the CSIC and the University of Saragossa.

The invention is based in new technicians of recovery and purification of the pertinent gas of the evaporation of the liquid in the medical equipment or scientists. The process of liquefaction adapts to the consumption, since the liquid produced keeps without losses the necessary time until going back to use . “What have contrived bases in employing the thermodynamic properties of the gas and in a new system of control of pressesure and flow in the container in which it stores the liquid produced to extract the maximum power to the refrigerador and achieve like this taxles of optimum liquefaction”, precise the researcher of the CSIC.

The helium is a gas fossil that obtains by separation of the natural gas in some yacimientos of the world. It treats of a strategic resource, limited and expensive, that in liquid state can reach the 40 euros the litre, whereas in gaseous state can arrive to cost between 10 and 30 euros the cubic metre. “With our method, the saving in litres finishes being of 100% to the few weeks of the installation of the plant. The cost of the liquid helium produced is, therefore, the cost of the electricity added to the maintenance and the amortización of the plant, estimated between one and two euros by litre produced”, clears Rillo.