Idk how I got onto this but I was just googling shit and I was wondering how we are running out of helium. I read that helium is the one non-renuable element on this planet because it comes from the result of radioactive decay. But from my memory and the D- I got in highschool chemistry, helium is number 2 on the periodic table of elements and hydrogen is number 1, so why can’t we just take a fuck ton of hydrogen, do some chemistry shit and turn it into helium? I know it’s not that simple I just don’t understand why it wouldn’t work.
Edit: I get it, it’s nuclear fusion which is physics, not chemistry. My grades were so back in chemistry that I didn’t take physics. Thank you for explaining it to me!
In: Chemistry
That would be nuclear fusion and the sun does it quite well.
Unfortunately, it takes 16 million degrees and a pressure of 250 billion atmospheres to make it happen.
While it is possible to produce small amounts of helium through nuclear fusion, the energy required to do so currently exceeds the energy produced. Therefore, artificial production of helium is not economically viable at this time *Google*
So we can actually do that, but it wouldn’t be chemistry but rather nuclear physics.
No chemical reaction can change the number of protons in an atom, it can only join atoms together in a molecule or break down molecules.
To perform a transmutation between elements you need to use a particle accelerator or nuclear reactor to throw protons into a nucleus or use neutrons to knock protons out of a nucleus.
You’ve just described a nuclear fusion reactor. We’re working on it!
It takes a lot of energy to fuse two hydrogen atoms together, and thus isn’t economical at the moment.
There’s also lots of Helium-3 on the moon. Establishing humans on the moon permanently isn’t just about scientific achievement.
We literally can and do exactly that. That’s what nuclear fusion reactors do, and there’s been some exciting breakthroughs with those lately. Google ITER etc.
>so why can’t we just take a fuck ton of hydrogen, do some chemistry shit and turn it into helium
because like charges repel, so getting the two H nuclei close enough together that they actually fuse requires squeezing the hydrogens together REALLY hard while also heating it to literally *millions* of degrees. [This is a machine we currently use to do it.](https://scx2.b-cdn.net/gfx/news/2022/better-nuclear-fusion-2.jpg)
So the real problem, like so often, is actually money. We DO turn hydrogen into helium, but it takes a billion-dollar fusion reactor to make fractions of a gram of helium this way. All the money in the world couldn’t make a useful amount of helium this way via any method we know of.
TLDR: It’s theoretically possible *and we’ve done it*, but it’s incredibly expensive and makes tiny amounts of helium, so it wouldn’t be worth it.
Well you can. But we can’t control individual atoms that well and catch the results. And then if we could we’d have to do it a LOT. Cause there’s a LOT of helium atoms in one kg of helium….So if you could figure out a way great but at the moment there’s no real profitable way to harvest the results of colliders aside from research purposes
You’re actually onto something, because this is more or less how helium is generated in nature– through the nuclear fusion of hydrogen in stars such as the sun. Unfortunately, we’re a long way from being able to make helium renewable, because controlled nuclear fusion is still very much in its infancy.
Lots of answers describing fusion. The real answer to your question is what’s called the electroweak force. In this case the two positive charges (the nuclei of the two hydrogen atoms) will try to move away from each other, just like a magnet would if you try and make the positive ends touch. Also, this force gets stronger the closer you get.
That said, it’s not impossible. There’s another force, the nuclear force harnessed in fusion (and fission), that is even more powerful when the particles get really close. But to overcome the electroweak force to get to point where the nuclear force takes over takes a lot of energy.
There have been a bunch of attempts to “do some chemistry shit” as you put it to get helium/fusion. There was a big stir in the 80s when some credible scientists said they’d figured it out. They’ve generally been disproven now but there’s a small, mostly discredited, group of folks still going after what’s called “cold fusion”, many of whom are doing some chemistry shit to make it happen
Well, it doesn’t really work that way.
First the issue isn’t that we’re going to just “run out” of helium. Rather, as helium reserves get depleted and harder to extract, the price of helium will increase.
Now, we can create helium but not from regular hydrogen. An ordinary hydrogen atom just has 1 proton in its nucleus and no neutrons. This is a problem because if you try to smash two protons together, 9999 times out of 10,000 they’ll just fly apart again. Neutrons are needed to hold the nucleus together.
So to get fusion to work on Earth, we need rarer kinds of hydrogen: hydrogen that has neutrons. We have deuterium (1 proton and 1 neutron) which exists in regular water, but you have to purify it to get any use out it. That takes a lot of money and energy. Then there is tritium (1 proton and 2 neutrons). That one we have to make, which is super expensive. Tritium is about 500 times more expensive than gold.
But to turn tritium and deuterium into helium, we still have to smash them together really hard. Ridiculously hard. That takes a lot of energy and you still only get a little bit of helium out of it.
Now, a hydrogen bomb does actually create helium by fusing these rare types of hydrogen, but they’re still very expensive and the tremendous explosion makes it impossible to collect the helium.
If it hasn’t been mentioned yet, you’d actually need 3 or 4 hydrogen atoms, with one or two of them undergoing Beta+ decay, turning the proton(s) into neutrons.
He-3 has 2 protons and 1 neutron, while He-4 has two of each.
You really need at least one neutron to hold that nucleus together. The 2 protons have a positive charge and repel one another without the strong nuclear force.
Using an isotope of Hydrogen called deuterium would work a lot better. It’s H-2 (has one neutron and one proton). Having the right conditions (heat & pressure) and these guys will fuse into He-4 without requiring any beta decay.
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