India imports helium for its needs, and with the U.S. appearing set to cut off exports of helium since 2021, Indian industry needs to diversify import options or explore the extraction from domestic sources.

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Helium is colourless, odourless, tasteless, inert and a noble gas. Helium is commercially exploited from  natural gas deposits. Helium is an inert gas and does not easily combine with other elements. Its Atomic Number is 2 and Gas at Room temperature. Its element classification is Non-metal and group name is Noble Gas. It also has the lowest boiling point of any element and can’t be solidified by lowering the temperature. After hydrogen, helium is the second most abundant element in the universe

Yet it finds many applications. Helium gas is used to inflate blimps, scientific balloons and party balloons(Due to low density). It is used as an inert shield for arc welding, to pressurize the fuel tanks of liquid fueled rockets and in supersonic wind tunnels. Helium is combined with oxygen to create a nitrogen free atmosphere for deep sea divers so that they will not suffer from a condition known as nitrogen narcosis. Liquid helium is an important cryogenic material and is used to study superconductivity and to create superconductive magnets.

Helium is used as a cooling medium for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and the superconducting magnets in MRI scanners and NMR spectrometers. It is also used to keep satellite instruments cool and was used to cool the liquid oxygen and hydrogen that powered the Apollo space vehicles.

Because it is very unreactive, helium is used to provide an inert protective atmosphere for making fibre optics and semiconductors, and for arc welding. Helium is also used to detect leaks, such as in car air-conditioning systems, and because it diffuses quickly it is used to inflate car airbags after impact.

Helium-neon gas lasers are used to scan barcodes in supermarket checkouts. A new use for helium is a helium-ion microscope that gives better image resolution than a scanning electron microscope.