Speaker
Description
Helium has excellent properties that cannot be replaced by other substances, such as complete inertness, cryogenic boiling point, high thermal conductivity, low density, low solubility, high diffusivity, non-irritant properties, and low viscosity. Helium is used in medical field to cool superconducting magnets in MRI, in industry for optical fiber and semiconductor manufacturing, welding, leak testing, fillers, etc.. For academic fields, helium is one of the "lifelines" like water and electricity, is an indispensable substance in a wide range of fields such as physics, chemistry, and astronomy.
However, "helium crisis" is globally taking place, and this could become even more serious in the future. Japan is also suffering from this crisis because it relies on imports for 100% of its helium, resulting in soaring prices and supply shortages. Researchers who use helium for academic research have little access to it.
We propose and implement measures such as helium recycle system to protect academic researchers from this helium crisis.
As a start, RIKEN and a MRI company conducted a demonstration experiment successfully to efficiently recover helium, which is wasted and discarded when MRIs are renewed. In this demonstration test, the discarded MRI containing liquid helium was transported directly to RIKEN, which has a liquefied helium production facility, to recover the gas from the MRI. This dramatically improved the efficiency of helium transport.
In the future, RIKEN plans to develop inexpensive on-site refining machines for semiconductor factories and to study on helium rental service for cryogenic researchers in universities that do not have a liquefaction machine.
