When will the Argon shortage end?

The US must have had real border security problems back then...
 
For those earlier that were thinking about liquifying your own air, you will need to remove the CO2 and water vapor down to very low levels before liquefaction, as these will solidify and gum up your efforts. While doing it at home is possible, I think it will be quite difficult to do it on a useful level. And you haven't even gotten to the distillation portion of the process to separate them yet.
 
I stopped by my LWS last week and asked if they have heard anything about an argon shortage and they said I was the first to even mention it. They did say helium or helium blends were nearly impossible to get right now. They said the big shop nearby gets ten bottles a month, and that's it.
 
cjtoombs said:
For those earlier that were thinking about liquifying your own air, you will need to remove the CO2 and water vapor down to very low levels before liquefaction, as these will solidify and gum up your efforts. While doing it at home is possible, I think it will be quite difficult to do it on a useful level. And you haven't even gotten to the distillation portion of the process to separate them yet.
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Understood. Without an affordable source for a high enough volume compressor (to overcome thermal losses) the whole idea looses its appeal. Distillation isn't that hard. Having liquid air, would be sufficient for my needs. Although for safety, perhaps I should boil off the oxygen.

Unfortunately nitrogen boils at -196C and oxygen at -183C. So a boiling air mixture would become oxygen enriched, since the nitrogen was escaping as the dewar warmed. I guess then one could re-compress that nitrogen and liquefy it. Seems to be a complicated project. Oh well, another pipe dream...
 
I believe that real air liquefaction plants have pretty much all their hardware made from aluminum, as it doesn't get as brittle at the low temps. They build a building to house the process equipment and once the equipment is inside they fill it with insulation. I think distillation of air is a lot more complex than you might think, especially if you want any kind of purity or you want to extract the argon. Especially if you want any kind of cost effectiveness.
 
cjtoombs said:
I believe that real air liquefaction plants have pretty much all their hardware made from aluminum, as it doesn't get as brittle at the low temps. They build a building to house the process equipment and once the equipment is inside they fill it with insulation. I think distillation of air is a lot more complex than you might think, especially if you want any kind of purity or you want to extract the argon. Especially if you want any kind of cost effectiveness.
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To keep this thread on track: It's hard to believe there is an argon shortage. Argon is relatively abundant. There could very well be local shortages, from unknown causes. For all we know, a local store had insufficient volume and they were removed from distribution...

To continue this particular hijack for a few more moments: I only asked about this in passing, to see if anyone know of a compressor design that I could make. It would be "cool" to make my own liquid air, pun intended. There was no intent to separate argon, or even oxygen. The urls I visited did mention the CO2 and water removal issue, which appears to be somewhat manageable. I wanted merely to see if it could be done truly DIY and at a low cost. Not to enter into full scale production, competing with the giants in the industry! So far it would seem that no one has pointed to a compressor design that could be made in a home shop, that was suitable for this application. If anyone knows of such a set of plans, it would be nice to see them.
 
Based on earlier posts it doesn't seem there is an Argon shortage. Now, back to the off topic topic:

One problem you run into with liquefaction of something like air is that room temperature is above the critical temperature of the air. Which means you could compress it until the cows come home and it won't liquify. If I remember correctly, in actual liquid air production, part of the liquid air produced is used to chill the condenser (after most of the heat is removed by other means. The data for the temperature/pressure relationship for the boiling/condensing behavior of air is available. You could take a look at that and see if dry is is below the critical temperature and then get the pressure you would need to condense with dry ice. That would give the pressure requirement. I think building a home built compressor in the ~2000 psi range would be possible. I think it would get progressively more difficult beyond that.
 
cjtoombs said:
Based on earlier posts it doesn't seem there is an Argon shortage. Now, back to the off topic topic:

One problem you run into with liquefaction of something like air is that room temperature is above the critical temperature of the air. Which means you could compress it until the cows come home and it won't liquify. If I remember correctly, in actual liquid air production, part of the liquid air produced is used to chill the condenser (after most of the heat is removed by other means. The data for the temperature/pressure relationship for the boiling/condensing behavior of air is available. You could take a look at that and see if dry is is below the critical temperature and then get the pressure you would need to condense with dry ice. That would give the pressure requirement. I think building a home built compressor in the ~2000 psi range would be possible. I think it would get progressively more difficult beyond that.
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It is true that room temperature is above the critical temperature of air. However, if one expands air, it's temperature drops. We can use this effect to self cool the system until the critical temperature is reached. It takes a while, and one needs good insulation, but it does work. I am under no illusion that this is a trivial task. However, that does not stop me from daydreaming how I could do it.

Hydrogen, as a fun fact, gets hotter as it expands, at least a room temperatures. Therefore a compressed hydrogen leak tends to ignite the leaking hydrogen. Which is why dealing with hydrogen is really difficult. One needs UV detectors to see the burning hydrogen, since there is very little visible light given off. Just things getting very hot where the leaks are. The heat, obviously can compromise the system. One needs to cool hydrogen significantly before the expansion coefficient changes sign.

High pressure air systems, like for PCP airguns, can regularly achieve 4500PSI, however they usually are quite low volume.
 
James Prescott Joule would spit out his single malt hearing that business about PV=NRT not applying to hydrogen. It exhibits some weird effects when forcing it through thin films or filters, but the change in temperature still follows the ideal gas law.
 
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