Economical use of expensive helium

Gas Mixer Helium Tretament

08.05.2019

Gas mixtures with helium are particularly suitable for leak-testing of safety-critical components. But helium is expensive. Modern gas technology from Witt makes it possible to reduce helium consumption, thereby lowering costs significantly.

Leak-testing of systems and components is an integral part of many industrial processes, such as the production of airbag inflators, in cooling systems, pipelines, gas meters, gas containers, pumps and compressors, or in medical technology, for example in the manufacture of cardiac pacemakers.

Helium’s physical properties make it particularly suited to these tests: It has a small atomic radius, which makes it possible to detect even the smallest leaks. It is also easy to detect, non-toxic, odorless and does not react with other materials. Due to the expensive nature of helium, it is generally not used in its pure form, but as part of gas mixtures, often together with nitrogen.

To counteract the high price of helium, Witt offers systems for the helium/nitrogen mixtures – these systems make the process much more economical. The initial test gas mixture, e.g. 20% helium and 80% nitrogen, is generated using a WITT mixer. After the leak tightness test of the product, the mixture is discharged from the test sample into a pipeline or a buffer tank and analyzed using a WITT gas analyzer. If helium has escaped during the test or if the test gas has mixed with ambient air from the test specimen, a WITT gas-dosing unit feeds in precisely enough helium to restore the required composition ratio of the test gas. The helium-nitrogen mixture prepared in this way can then be reused for further tests. All of this is done fully automatically.

At the technological heart of such a system is the perfect interaction of gas mixer, gas analyzer and gas dosing unit. Witt configures and scales the individual components to suit the size of application and other given parameters.

Witt is the market leader in gas processing technology and gas safety technology with over 70 years of experience.

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