As the preferred cooling medium, helium is utilised throughout the hospital and healthcare sector but finds favour in a range of applications across the industry.
In its natural state, helium is a colourless, odorless, and tasteless gas. It has the lowest solubility in water of any known gas, is the least reactive element and forms essentially no chemical compounds. The density and viscosity of helium vapor is also very low, while thermal conductivity and heat content are exceptionally high. In liquid form, helium retains its inert, colorless and odorless qualities, but is also non-corrosive, extremely cold and nonflammable. A limited, natural resource, on Earth it is created by the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium. In our atmosphere, the amount of helium by volume is only 5.2 ppm.
Applications
Liquid helium is used in the hospital and healthcare field to super cool magnets in MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machines, representing 21% of all helium use globally. Liquid helium is also used to cool some thermo graphic cameras, which detect heat instead of visible light and are used by search-and-rescue teams to locate people among rubble or through smoke. Another 12% of the helium produced globally is used to provide an inert gas shield for laser welding.
Other applications of helium include, use in supersonic wind tunnels, to provide lift for high-altitude scientific research balloons, pressurizing space-shuttle fuel tanks, and for use in the fiber optics, semiconductor, computer chip and flat-panel display manufacturing industries. Due to its many credible attributes this non-corrosive gas extends to uses in a number of other applications, including in the study of superconductivity, in metallurgy, analytical chemistry and leak detection. As helium won’t become radioactive, it is also used as a cooling medium for nuclear reactors.
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