New Prague company helping effort to build helium plant on Iron Range
NEW PRAGUE, Minn. — Experts call an accidental discovery on the Iron Range one of the most significant helium reservoirs in the world.
WCCO visited the site in Babbitt in February 2024 to see the underground mine.
This summer, engineers at Pulsar Helium hope to start building a plant that will extract helium gas and store it on the surface.
That's where Chart Industries, based in New Prague, comes in.
"As the gas comes out of the ground, the next stage is refining that gas and creating a pure helium product, and that's the equipment provided here by Chart, and then the storage tanks will store the helium before it goes off to where the customers need it to be," said Thomas Abraham James, chief executive with Pulsar Helium.
Organizers already have an idea of what the layout of the plant will look like.
"The tanks would be right next to the production facility, so right there onsite near the well heads and maybe two to four to start off with," he said.
The cost to design and build the plant in Babbitt could be up to $50 million.
Helium is a $3 billion industry, and blimps and balloons aren't the markets inflating that price. It's used in rockets, aerospace, semiconductors, welding and MRI machines.
When compressed into a liquid, helium is the safest and most efficient coolant around. It takes some special tanks to keep it that way. Liquid helium is around 450 degrees below zero.
"There's walls within, so double-walled insulation, with super insulation in between, and vacuum-pressured tanks and that's what helps keep that gas a liquid at supercritical cold temps," Amy George with Chart Industries said.
Chart is expected to complete its design for the plant this spring, and it could be up and running by the summer of 2026.