how do they get helium

Helium for balloons and science mostly comes from underground natural gas fields, where it’s separated out and purified before being sold.

How helium actually forms

• Most usable helium is helium‑4 , created deep underground by radioactive decay of heavy elements like uranium and thorium over millions of years.

• Because helium is very light and doesn’t react with other elements, it tends to escape into space unless it gets trapped under impermeable rock layers together with natural gas.

Step 1: Finding helium underground

• Geologists look for natural gas reservoirs that contain a few tenths of a percent up to about 4% helium mixed in with methane and other gases.

• Exploration wells are drilled through “cap rock” into these gas fields; the raw gas that comes up is mostly methane plus small amounts of helium, nitrogen, and other components.

Step 2: Separating helium from natural gas

• The raw gas first goes through standard natural‑gas processing: drying, removing carbon dioxide and heavy hydrocarbons, and cooling it down to very low (cryogenic) temperatures.

• At these low temperatures, almost everything except helium liquefies because helium has an extremely low boiling point, so helium stays as a gas while other components turn to liquid and can be drained off.

Step 3: Purifying the helium

• The “crude helium” stream that’s left might be roughly 50% helium, with the rest mostly nitrogen and small traces of other gases.

• It is purified using techniques like pressure‑swing adsorption, membranes, and further cryogenic distillation until it reaches 99.99% purity for medical and high‑tech uses.

Step 4: Liquefying and shipping

• Pure helium gas can be compressed into cylinders or further cooled into liquid helium for things like MRI scanners and research magnets.

• Because helium is finite and hard to replace once released, many labs and gas suppliers now focus on recovery and recycling systems instead of wasting it in applications like disposable party balloons.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.