It is lighter than air, inert and makes us happy! Helium is a gas which is more famous for lifting balloons into the sky than anything else, however could it be a game changer for net zero technologies?
Thomas Abraham-James runs a company called Pulsar Helium, looking to transform the way we collect this very useful gas. I started asking him what helium is and where it is found…
“You’ve got two different isotopes, one, which is the primordial helium, which is what we have out there floating around the universe, its so small that it does like to escape our atmosphere. Whereas the most abundant form of helium, here on Earth is helium four, the other isotope. And that is formed, from radiogenic decay to uranium, thorium breaking down half-lives. What it does is it creates an alpha particle and that alpha particle is helium.
“Helium, it is non-toxic. It’s inert. We can’t get it to freeze either. So we can get it down to just below absolute zero and it’s still a liquid, whereas everything else is frozen
“But pretty much everything we use, including what I’m talking to you on right now (computer), it was used in the fabrication process. You need liquid helium in order to make the wafers for the semiconductors.
“It’s a commodity we never knew that we relied upon.
The problem is often this very useful element is found in hydrocarbon reserves, so its a by-product of oil and gas, Thomas wants to get his helium from non-fossil fuel deposits so it doesn’t involve releasing more emissions.
Pulsar won’t extract helium that’s trapped with fossil fuels, instead they are looking for very rare deposits of the gas in its ‘primary form’ ie without hydrocarbons – and they then use a special technique powered solely by electricity to extract this ‘clean helium.”
“We don’t use water. We don’t use chemicals with the drillings that we do. So it’s not digging holes, it’s not pits or anything like that. It’s simply a well going down, a glorified water bore. And then the gas naturally comes up to surface. There’s no fracking, there’s no chemicals, there’s nothing like that. And there’s no pipelines no large footprint. “
So what can helium add to the net zero transition?
Well it appears it is useful in everything from EVs to data centres.
Thomas explained: “For the formation of batteries for EVs, helium is used as a leak detection because it’s so small, so it’s easy to detect. So you can imagine if you purchased system with helium and if you have a sensor on the other side, there must be a leak if it finds helium, because there’s so few, atoms of it in the atmosphere.
“Then energy – the next, iteration of reactors, that are being designed and starting to be fabricated use liquid helium. So it’s a cooling agent. So that’s for safety as well. But then also for absorption, of any radiation.
“Data centres. This is probably the big one. There’s two ways it’s being utilised. So one is for the the older hard drives, the disks that spin – you replace the atmosphere with helium. So then they spin, a lot more freely, less energy, less friction, more efficiency, less electrical drawdown.
“And then the other one is the big data centers themselves to keep them cool with helium systems. So the energy requirement is less. Some of the forecasts for energy demand just for data centres alone is is actually quite scary, to be honest. And so helium may well play a role in helping that.”
Listen now to the full conversation and what we might do with helium exploration in the years to come. Please susbcribe to our newsletter and the channel and share the podcast with friends and colleagues.
Copyright © 2025 Energy Live News LtdELN