Sourcing helium cylinders

Hi,
I have recently started doing small scale events and I am not able to find good, reliable suppliers, in Mumbai.
I am desperately looking for a source of pure helium gas cylinders for balloons. I need a really reliable source as my last event ended in a disaster. I had asked the local balloon-walla to fill the balloons with helium for me. This turned out to be a BIG mistake. For some reason, a balloon burst in the middle of the event and to my horror, caused a flame outburst. This was because a person standing nearby was holding a lit cigarette , and the gas ignited!!

I know helium is an inert gas and therefore should NOT have ignited. However after asking around i found that apparently the helium gas was contaminated with hydrogen I believe this is a common practice in India as pure helium is relatively expensive.
For my next event, the client has asked for helium balloons but I am stuck since I dare not take a chance with contaminated helium. I went to party stores to search for helium cans but they did not have them. I also looked on the net for pure helium cylinders but I am unsure where to get them from.
I want 100% pure helium in a cylinder so I can fill the balloons myself. Where can I get this in Mumbai? A medical supply store?? What do others use for floating balloons?
Thanks so much for any help
Raima

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Permalink Reply by Amit (Administrator) on April 21, 2010 at 5:04pm

Hot air is a good and safer alternative to Helium. Check out this link:

http://www.ibaonline.net/HeliumUsageandStandards/AlternativestoHeli...

For mumbai, check them out:

http://www.balloonsindia.com/home.htm

they are in Dadar East.

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Permalink Reply by Mikhail Liberman on June 14, 2010 at 8:09pm

I want to join the administrator. 9 out of 10 one can use air instead of helium. I do not know why hot, any will do. Most of what I do is air. I use frames I bent myself - usually much cheaper than helium. Some are simple - a flat piece of wood and a rod sticking up - for a centerpiece topiary, some are more complicated. Or you can suspend balloons or structures from the ceiling. Sometimes you have to go on a ladder to reach the ceiling. Sometimes you can use a magnet and a long stick to reach the ceiling from the floor.
Once you start thinking "air" you will use helium rear and if pressed, just live as if it is not available at all. Most of what we do is air filled (wowballoons.com)
Best of luck!
Mikhail

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Permalink Reply by Connie Li on July 23, 2010 at 9:00am

We use mixture of helium and air or nitrogen to make clouds, as helium is so expensive. As I know, the purity of helium we bought in China is 99%. So I don't know if 100%purity of helium is easy to find out. We needn't use 100% helium, because we only use helium to make the foam clouds flying up in the air, and mixture of helium and air or nitrogen is just enough. Just see the pictures of the effect below.

Also hope you could find the 100% helium of other available gases, because I agree with you that gas if used improperly is very dangerous, which we all don't want it happen. Wish you good luck!

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