Every yr, India imports helium price ₹55,000 crore from the U.S.
Helium is colourless, odourless, tasteless, inert and a noble gasoline. Yet, it finds many purposes, primarily in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, in rockets and in nuclear reactors. India imports helium for its wants, and with the U.S. showing set to chop off exports of helium since 2021, Indian business stands to lose out closely. What is the answer? Can India grow to be self-reliant in the direction of its wants of helium gasoline?
Helium on Earth
In 1906 a younger Englishman by the identify of Moris Travers arrived in Bangalore, to take up the place of the Director of Indian Institute of Science. Travers extracted helium in small amount by heating up monazite sand abundantly obtainable in Kerala seaside, in a pioneering effort.
Dutch physicist Kamerlingh Onnes liquefied Helium by cooling the gasoline to -270 levels Celsius. It is understood that Kamerlingh Onnes collected helium gasoline from the springs of Bath in Baden Baden, Germany for his liquefaction experiment.
Some scientists and geologists began searching for helium underground – they guessed it could be current there by analysing particles from volcanic eruptions. From the oil drilling operation in Dexter, Kansas, in the U.S., chemists Hamilton Cady and David McFarland found the presence of helium in pure gasoline. They additional went on to find that regardless of its total rarity, helium was concentrated in massive portions underneath the American Great Plains.
The U.S. grew to become an important exporter of helium internationally. It was quickly realised that U.S. was additionally the largest retailer home of helium.
The U.S., now, is planning to modify off export of helium from 2021. Qatar is a potential exporter however acute political and diplomatic wrangles have made Qatar unreliable.
Every yr, India imports helium price Rs 55,000 crores from the U.S. to satisfy its wants.
Around 1956, as vice chancellor of Viswabharati University, Professor Satyendranath Bose as soon as visited a village known as Bakreswar (close to Santiniketan) the place he discovered water boiling naturally in a small tank. Satyen Bose’s antenna for unexplored and thrilling science perked up! He was eager to analyse the pure gasoline that got here out of the tank.
Satyen Bose requested his pupil Shyamadas Chatterjee to look into this. What Shyamadas Chatterjee discovered was beautiful: 1.8% of the pure gasoline emanating from the boiling water was helium. After additional experiments, this outcome was established.
Shyamadas Chatterjee’s hunch was that the world known as Rajmahal volcanic basin round Bakreswar and close by Tantloi, now in Jharkhand, have been floating on an ocean of helium.
He and his pupil Debasis Ghose began exploring Tantloi, which is populated by tribal individuals. The village is located subsequent to a stream, with naturally sizzling water with pure gasoline emanating from it. Preliminary investigations of the stream indicated there was round 1.6% of helium in the emanating gasoline, rather less than that in Bakreswar. This was round (1965-66). Professor Bose was in raptures.
Emerging challenge
Homi Sethna, then the Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission organized for the challenge to be half of the newly began Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC) challenge of Kolkata.
When I came visiting to Kolkata round 1984 to VECC from BARC, Bombay the helium challenge didn’t present a lot exercise. The journey of all of it attracted me. I persuaded Dr. Divatia then the director of VECC to make a journey to Bakreswar together with Professor Chatterjee and Dr. Ghose.
In the night Debasis Ghose produced a letter written by Prof. S. N. Bose to Nurul Hasan, Minister for Education on January 22, 1974, the place Prof. Bose had, together with his legendary foresight, argued with the minister for the manufacturing of helium on a semi-commercial scale. Prof. Bose sadly died on February 4, the identical yr. It must be talked about that Bhabha Atomic Research Centre underneath the management of R. Okay. Garg, head of the Chemical and Engineering Division, in the Nineteen Seventies made an effort to extract helium from monazite sand simply as Travers did some years in the past. Unfortunately, this challenge was doomed, and BARC didn’t push it any additional.
When we took over the challenge in late Eighties we bought very busy with different analysis and improvement tasks. We all thought assortment of helium on a big scale is a semi-commercial operation and nothing very a lot to do with analysis or improvement. Besides which, we simply didn’t have the enough man energy.
So, this huge reservoir of helium in the Rajmahal volcanic belt remained untapped.
Scientific fraternity
Extracting helium on a big scale didn’t appear to be of nice significance to our scientific fraternity. After I stepped down from my official job in 2009, the likelihood of helium extraction appeared much more bleak. Then, I discovered a really understanding and enthusiastic individual in the current chairman of Atomic Energy Commission, Dr. Okay. N. Vyas, who readily agreed to offer the challenge a push with all of the may of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE).
Work has began in proper earnest in collaboration with Atomic Mineral Division of DAE. Preliminary measurements and survey have already began.
Our goal is to a minimum of meet India’s requirement of helium. India consumes about 70 million cubic metres per yr. But the reserve of helium by far exceeds this.
So, this effort though considerably late isn’t too late but!
India’s Rajmahal volcanic basin is the shop home of helium trapped for billions years, because the very start of our Earth from the Sun. At current, we’re mapping the Rajmahal basin extensively for future exploration and harnessing of helium.
In conclusion, helium is not only for ballons however it’s the key ingredient for India’s excessive know-how and probably the most subtle medical analysis.
(Dr Bikash Sinha is an INSA senior scientist and former director of Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics and Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, Kolkata)
