Research and development of helium-extraction from natural gas

Abstract Helium is a strategic resource widely used in defense and high-tech industries. The main source of industrialization in helium extraction is helium-type natural gas. There are few natural gas resources containing helium in China’s proven natural gas, and a small amount of natural gas resources containing helium also have low helium content. Helium resources are extremely precious and difficult to extract. The technology at home and abroad is introduced and summarized: PSA (pressure swing adsorption) method and membrane separation method own the simple flow and high purity of helium product; cryogenic method, although it suffers from high consumption in energy, is a mature technology with high recovery of helium and is currently the widely used technology. Integrated helium-extraction technologies are a combination of multiple technologies for separation, such as helium extraction integrated with cryogenic method and membrane separation, light hydrocarbon recovery and denitrification, hydrate and catalytic dehydrogenation, which improving the recovery and purity of helium and reduced the cost, thus have broad prosperity of application.

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	WANG Zi
	ZHU Lin
	YANG Zhe
	ZENG Xingyan
	WANG Yuan
	FAN Junming

Keywords： helium helium-extraction from natural gas traditional methods integrated methods progress

Received 2023-05-22;

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WANG Zi, ZHU Lin, YANG Zhe, ZENG Xingyan, WANG Yuan, FAN Junming.Research and development of helium-extraction from natural gas[J] Chemcial Industry and Engineering, 2025,V42(1): 113-129

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