Did you know that helium is the second most abundant element in the entire atmosphere? That fact alone may not be much use to you, but when it is pressurised and put into helium cylinders, like the ones you can buy from Rent Free Gas, helium is not only colourless, odourless, non-corrosive, non-toxic and non-combustible, it’s also very handy for industry and your DIY projects.

Here’s a few ways to put your cheap helium tanks to good use:

1. Balloons

The most obvious use for your cheap helium tanks is to keep children happy at birthday parties by having colourful floating balloons all around the party. The balloons float because helium is the second lightest known gas.

2. Coolant

Because helium can be cooled below its critical temperature without condensing into a solid, it is useful in the area of cryogenics. While that may be the case, it’s unlikely you’ll be using your cheap helium tanks bought from Rentfree gas to make superfluid helium for superconducting, quantum computing or x-ray crystallography – but you never know!

3. Welding

Helium is one of the noble gases that is commonly used as an affordable inert gas for welding, acting as a shielding agent against oxygen and water.

4. Detecting leaks

A lesser-known use for your cheap helium tanks is for detecting leaks. It is a good tracer gas not just because it is relatively inexpensive for this application, non-toxic and non-flammable, but because its small atomic size means helium escapes through the tiniest of gaps.

5. Growing crystal

Another major use for cheap helium tanks is to create a controlled atmosphere for a range of chemical processes, one of the biggest ones being growing crystal. This was even done by a group of Japanese scientists at zero gravity!

6. Lasers

Again, it’s unlikely you will use your own cheap helium tanks for creating the sort of lasers that are used for barcode reading, but this element is used extensively through the world of science, including in the famous particle accelerator called the Large Hadron Collider.

For more information on how you can purchase your own cheap helium tank, contact Rent Free Gas today on 1300 792 603 or drop me an email: simon@rentfreegas.com.au