Helium is a valuable element as it is widely used in industry due to its unique properties such as welding and cooling of superconductors in medical devices like MRI machines. The main industrial source of helium is natural gas, and extracting it from LNG end-flash is considered to be a promising way of producing crude helium. There are three types of technologies extracting helium from LNG end-flash; (1) flashing-based, (2) distillation-based, and (3) combination of flashing and distillation. This study provides an overview of aforementioned helium extraction processes for LNG plants. A performance comparison of these extraction processes and how they affect the LNG process are also made to give guidelines for a proper process selection.
