Balloon helium- what's in it?

[Rob Dobson]

Nope

Er yes actually. There was a legal bun fight over this not so long ago when one of the He suppliers was supplying straight He to florists and it was challenged by scuba gas filling station owner (or something like that).

I know the guy who won the ruling and he does superb gas fills

[dynarob]

http://www.heliumuk.co.uk/bocinstructions.pdf

'Interesting' that the relative density is stated as 0.14 (air=1) which is slightly less than I expect of pure Helium (0.1488?).

[dry suit diver]

'Interesting' that the relative density is stated as 0.14 (air=1) which is slightly less than I expect of pure Helium (0.1488?).

dpnds on how many Decimal places they set the spreadsheet to have

Ok it should round it up but its a theory.

[Bantam]

Er yes actually. There was a legal bun fight over this not so long ago when one of the He suppliers was supplying straight He to florists and it was challenged by scuba gas filling station owner (or something like that).

I know the guy who won the ruling and he does superb gas fills

So why, when I put my O2 analyser on the little cannister of party balloon gas I bought from Makro to do some party balloons once, does it drop down to 0? You know the ones - the little disposable cannisters that BOC sell in Tesco and places like that which have just enough helium to fill up about 50 balloons.

(Note - the answer isn't that my O2 analyser is lying... - and I did it just out of curiosity as I also believed that they had to put some O2 in the mix by law - but it seems that may not be the case...)

[Rob Dobson]

So why, when I put my O2 analyser on the little cannister of party balloon gas I bought from Makro to do some party balloons once, does it drop down to 0?

(Note - the answer isn't that my O2 analyser is lying... - and I did it just out of curiosity as I also believed that they had to put some O2 in the mix by law - but it seems that may not be the case...)

It's supposed to be in there, if it isn't then it isn't. Naughty Makro. So what does your analyser say the He content is? Be nice if it was 100% and dirt cheap but I doubt it on both counts.

[NotDeadYet]

it does say on the side do not breathe so if you croak thn its your own fault.

I've never seen that on the side of any balloons I've breathed off of...

[Lou]

Do you mean an MRI scanner?

If so then I would doubt there would be much of concern in there. Maybe a bit of air, some extra nitrogen if it wasn't all blown out before the He fill, some vac grease ......

[ScuBen]

I've never seen that on the side of any balloons I've breathed off of...

ssh, keep that to yourself.

'elf 'n safety will be all over it like a rash, and birthdays will never be the same again.

[Keith]

I hired a bottle of balloon gas from air products back in Feb and put my analyser on it to see how much oxygen was in it, believing the urban myth that it had sufficient O2 in it to sustain life. The analyser read near as damn it zero, so I decanted 80bar into a 7L, planning on making a mix. Unfortunately I haven’t got the bottle to try it out as I'm not sure if there's anything nasty lurking inside.

[cazyoung]

Helium is not usually scavenged from MRI scanners, it slowly boils off as the scanner is used (some more rapidly than others) so they get topped up. The research MRI scanner that I operate is due to be decommissioned at the end of the year and we will not be removing helium which is in a liquid state in the scanner. We will probably quench it and film it !!! Hope that helps