# Inert gas ?????



## sampvt (Mar 3, 2015)

As a newbee, I am intrigued with the mention of inert gases to form a blanket on top of the resting wine, presumably to protect it from oxidisation or contact with the air left in the carboy so it doesn't spoil.

Can someone please explain what gases we should use and how is it done. I have heard of using gas canisters on beer which prolongs its lifespan in a beer cellar of a pub, but how or what do we use to put gas in a carboy.


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## Rocky (Mar 3, 2015)

The inert gases are Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon and Radon. All other gases are 'ert.'  For wine making usage, your best bet is Argon for its availability, weight and cost.


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## sampvt (Mar 3, 2015)

Rocky said:


> The inert gases are Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon and Radon. All other gases are 'ert.'  For wine making usage, your best bet is Argon for its availability, weight and cost.



The million dollar question is where can we buy or get these gases and in what form do they come.


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## sampvt (Mar 3, 2015)

Ive just found a spray canister for £12 on the internet e bay. Is this the stuff we need.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/371230330591?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT


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## sour_grapes (Mar 3, 2015)

Argon is widely available at welding supply houses.

Also, Rocky is not quite correct about the "ertness" of common gases. CO2 and N2 are inert as far as this problem is concerned. CO2 is obviously not desirable, however.

And, by the way, the notion of one gas providing a "blanket" over the wine is a bit ludicrous, regardless of their relative weights.


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## GreginND (Mar 3, 2015)

Rocky said:


> The inert gases are Helium, Neon, Argon, Krypton, Xenon and Radon. All other gases are 'ert.'  For wine making usage, your best bet is Argon for its availability, weight and cost.



In this case inert is not referring to chemical reactivity, but protection from oxygen. Two gasses you did not mention are Nitrogen and Carbon Dioxide.

I would not recommend CO2 as it can dissolve into the wine and then you will have fizzy wine.

Nitrogen, on the other hand, is significantly cheaper than argon and is likely the best cost/protection for inert gas techniques.

In order to source tanks of inert gas you want to contact your local welding supply houses. They should be able to get whatever gasses you need. Around here our gas supplier is a company called Praxair.


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## sour_grapes (Mar 3, 2015)

I am glad my message was posted two minutes earlier than Greg instead of two minutes later! 

Well, if two of us say the same thing, it must be correct, no?


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## Just-a-Guy (Mar 4, 2015)

Further question - how to do do it? I've done something like it with beers with a corny keg, where you can force it with gas (there, with beer, you use CO2), and bleed it off with the valve to get out the oxygen, then fill it again. But how do you do it with wine?


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## vacuumpumpman (Mar 4, 2015)

Usually I have a flexible hose attached to the regulator and push in inside the neck of the carboy. Turn it on and push out all the air because the gas is heavier than air and then cap it off.


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## PhilDarby (Mar 4, 2015)

helium is inert and readily available, for kiddies balloons, but i`ve no idea how it would work with any of these ideas, its also, lighter than air so might be awkward to use.

Although it could probably be used with a pressure barrel im not sure of its effects interaction wise eg it might be taken up by the fluid and cause a squeaky voice or other problems.

It might be effective at low pressure merely to expel oxygen though.


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## brewbush (Mar 4, 2015)

So I have read other posts regarding inert gases and their flow on the surface of a liquid. However even if the gases mix the heavier one would setting on top of the liquid correct? 

How long do you allow the gas to flow?
Do you do a match test in the neck of the carboy to determine lack of O2?
How long will this "blanket" protect the wine before you have to regas the deadspace in the carboy?
How long have you kept a reasonably large headspace filled with inert gas and still had a nonoxidized wine?


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## sour_grapes (Mar 4, 2015)

brewbush said:


> So I have read other posts regarding inert gases and their flow on the surface of a liquid. However even if the gases mix the heavier one would setting on top of the liquid correct?



No, this is not correct. Gases spontaneously mix and diffuse. The relative densities of the gases have a vanishingly small effect on their position.

It is true that any two gases that are brought into contact will stay separated on short time scales (seconds to minutes). However, on the time scale of tens of minutes, they will diffuse and mix together.

This is not to say that you cannot reduce the O2 content in your headspace by flushing with a different gas. But the fact that Ar is denser than O2 plays (essentially) no role in this.


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## ibglowin (Mar 4, 2015)

The theory of blanketing with inert gas is plain hogwash. Like Paul says it will all diffuse together over time. The only way it works is to flush flush flush the headspace with either Argon or Nitrogen (which is cheaper than Argon) and then seal tightly. The match trick is just that. A trick. There can still be enough O2 in the vessel to oxidize your wine over time but not enough to keep a match or lighter lit.


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## GreginND (Mar 4, 2015)

derekjames100 said:


> Flushing w inert before corking can be of benefit.



I'm not convinced it makes any difference for a home winemaker - especially if one is doing vacuum bottling with an AIOWP.


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## GaDawg (Mar 5, 2015)

ibglowin said:


> The theory of blanketing with inert gas is plain hogwash. Like Paul says it will all diffuse together over time. The only way it works is to flush flush flush the headspace with either Argon or Nitrogen (which is cheaper than Argon) and then seal tightly. The match trick is just that. A trick. There can still be enough O2 in the vessel to oxidize your wine over time but not enough to keep a match or lighter lit.



It may be hogwash, but that is what Joeswine does and he has a rep. for making some very good wine


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## Norske (Mar 5, 2015)

Ask a 10 winemakers their opinion on a subject and you will get 11 different responses.

I was taught by a commercial winemaker with 28 plus years in the commercial wine making industry and one thing he taught me was to sparge the tanks with argon. We use SS Variable Volume tanks and do not let the lid float on the wine. Instead, we leave a head space of 6-10" and sparge it with argon. Every tank is checked and resparged with argon every Sunday AM. 
Their is quite a bit of lit available on the techniques used to sparge argon. Basically the lower the pressure the better. Also we use a stainless steel T that fits down through the top of the bung, whereas it flows out horizontally across the top of the wine, versus spraying vertically down on the wine.
To this date, we have never had one tank go bad. This method has worked extremely well for us. This can only work if you are religious on maintaining diligence on checking/sparging. 

I too realize the debates on this matter go across the whole spectrum. All I know is this method seems to be working for us quite well.


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## ibglowin (Mar 5, 2015)

I think you may have misinterpreted my statement.



GaDawg said:


> It may be hogwash, but that is what Joeswine does and he has a rep. for making some very good wine


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## sour_grapes (Mar 5, 2015)

Yes, note that Mike said "The only way it works is to flush flush flush the headspace with either Argon or Nitrogen." This is another word for "sparging." You have to actually _remove_ the oxygen.

I, too, have advocated sparging in other posts. All I am trying to say here is that you absolutely cannot rely on the relative densities of two gases to provide any protection. They will mix. The fact that Ar is heavier than N2 has (almost) no influence on what the gas composition next to the wine will be.

Still don't believe me? As JohnT has pointed out, Earth's atmosphere is 0.5% Ar. If it "settled to the bottom," we would be smothered by Ar down here at ground level.

Still don't believe me? What about liquids? Ethanol is much less dense than water. Have you noticed that the top of your wine bottle contains much more alcohol than the bottom? Neither have I. (Oil and water is a different case: here, we are only considering _miscible fluids_.)

If you STILL don't believe me, I will present the full statistical mechanical treatment -- and I don't think anyone, including me, wants that!


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## sampvt (Mar 5, 2015)

I know this is probably a daft idea, but has anyone thought of putting a balloon in the demi or carboy and blowing it up sealing the neck of the balloon in the bung to achieve a seal after it pushes the top level of the wine right up to the neck. 

It could work by feeding the balloon in and have it weighted down by placing marbles inside the balloon so it sinks but could be suspended mid carboy with a thread round the neck.

Its a silly idea, but my mind works differently due to being a professional golfer all my adult life. I look outside the box for any hep I can get.


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## Just-a-Guy (Mar 5, 2015)

sour_grapes said:


> If you STILL don't believe me, I will present the full statistical mechanical treatment -- and I don't think anyone, including me, wants that!




I would like the full statistical mechanical treatment. Can I get that with a Béarnaise?


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## vacuumpumpman (Mar 5, 2015)

sampvt said:


> I know this is probably a daft idea, but has anyone thought of putting a balloon in the demi or carboy and blowing it up sealing the neck of the balloon in the bung to achieve a seal after it pushes the top level of the wine right up to the neck.
> 
> It could work by feeding the balloon in and have it weighted down by placing marbles inside the balloon so it sinks but could be suspended mid carboy with a thread round the neck.
> 
> Its a silly idea, but my mind works differently due to being a professional golfer all my adult life. I look outside the box for any hep I can get.



BTW - I came up with that same idea, 3 years back 
It never really took off 
http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f3/carboy-air-space-bladder-trial-version-18124/

I know have a new improved idea that can suck out the headspace of air and leave the container under vacuum. I also have a vacuum indicator to show you a visual that there is still vacuum in the vessel.


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## sour_grapes (Mar 5, 2015)

Just-a-Guy said:


> I would like the full statistical mechanical treatment. Can I get that with a Béarnaise?



No, but you can get it with an exfoliation and skin conditioner.


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## stickman (Mar 5, 2015)

The main advantage of argon and its higher density is during racking and transferring operations. The key is using a relatively low flow rate to minimize mixing and allow the more dense gas lay at the bottom of the vessel. As pointed out earlier, it wont stay there forever, but for racking it will stay long enough. If done properly you will use significantly less argon than nitrogen. The following article is interesting and explains with some technical detail much of what has been discussed here.


http://vinovation.com/ArticleArgon2.htm


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## Norske (Mar 5, 2015)

Great read, thanks!


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## Cluster (Mar 10, 2015)

Im guessing the general consensus is going to be to just get some pure Argon, but I have some 80/20 Ar/CO2 for welding could that be used or is that already too much CO2?


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## stickman (Mar 11, 2015)

The 80/20 argon co2 will work, you just need to asses your preference for the wine co2 content and its effect on flavor. Most of the time winemakers are talking about degassing the wine to remove the excess co2, and this is fine and necessary to bring the co2 level down to an acceptable range, but it has been shown that, depending on the wine, removing too much co2 can have a negative effect on flavor. Many wineries use gas blends to maintain the desired level of co2 in the wine, but these people have equipment and test methods beyond the scope of most home winemakers.

Below are a couple of clips of some data with references noted. The data is for nitrogen co2 blends, so argon co2 blends will be similar, but not exactly the same. The data is of limited use, because it requires you to know what co2 level you want, but at least it provides a basic understanding of the principles.


"Because CO2 can dissolve in wine and N2 gas can completely deplete the CO2 content in a wine, a mixture of gasses which keep the level of CO2 in the wine constant is preferable. As a rule of thumb the CO2 content in red wines should be below 900 mg/l and that of white wines below 1400 mg/l. A too high or too low CO2 content can be detrimental to the wine ( Peynaud, 1994 ) and the exact level should be determined by taste. From figure 3 the mixture of gases can be determined at different temperatures. A mixture of twenty percent CO2 and 80% nitrogen should be used at 10°C to maintain a CO2 content of 500 mg/l in the wine. So if you consider both the normal cellar temperature and the amount of CO2 needed in the wine, then you can work out the ideal mixture."

See attachment

Figure 3. Theoretical composition of a CO2/N2 mixture to maintain initial CO2 content (Allen, 1994)

"Following Peynaud and other researchers, the ballpark numbers are pretty well known. Wine emerges from fermentation with about two grams per liter of dissolved CO2, and it declines from there. At 500 milligrams per liter, the presence of CO2 is noticeable; at 1,000 mg/L, there is a slight perception of prickliness. The textbook recommendation is that age-worthy reds should be bottled with no more than 100-200 mg/L; light, fruity reds could benefit from about 500 mg/L, and whites, depending on stylistic intent, might range anywhere from 500 mg/L to 1,800 mg/L, from slightly punched up to noticeably spritzy. (Wines & Vines, May 2011)


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## sour_grapes (Mar 11, 2015)

That is great info, stickman. Thanks!

By the way, it may not be clear to many how to use that diagram. It is called a "nomogram." What you do is draw a line from the CO2 level you want to the temperature it is stored at. Then extend that over to the other side, and that tells you the % CO2 to use. The dashed line in the figure above is an example -- it tells you that "A mixture of twenty percent CO2 and 80% nitrogen should be used at 10°C to maintain a CO2 content of 500 mg/l in the wine" as noted above, but what I am saying is the dashed line is where those figures came from.


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## richmke (Mar 11, 2015)

Norske said:


> Their is quite a bit of lit available on the techniques used to sparge argon. Basically the lower the pressure the better. Also we use a stainless steel T that fits down through the top of the bung, whereas it flows out horizontally across the top of the wine, versus spraying vertically down on the wine.



I looked up "sparging", and it seems to imply bubbling an inert gas through the liquid in order to remove another gas, such as O2.

If you are just replacing the air on top of the tank, would that be closer to "purging", rather than "sparging"?


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## stickman (Mar 11, 2015)

Richmke, you are technically correct, sparging means introducing a gas below the liquid level, but it is often used incorrectly in winemaking discussions. You can usually determine what is meant by the context of the discussion.

Whenever I introduce a gas, whether into the headspace or below the liquid, I use a sintered stainless sparge tip, it's like an aquarium bubble stone. It allows the gas to be emitted from a larger surface area, so you get laminar flow even using 1/4" tubing, at least in home winemaking applications like small tanks and carboys. I have filled bottles and carboys with smoke and then injected the gas at the bottom with the sparge tip and watched the smoke lift out gently and evenly in one layer without mixing, and it happens with near one volume of gas if done right. Interesting to see something you usually can't see.


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## stickman (Mar 11, 2015)

Sour grapes, good point, I come from the chemical process industry and kind of incorrectly took for granted that people would know what the graph was indicating.


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## richmke (Mar 11, 2015)

It would be interesting if you were actually sparging. Bubbling argon through the wine could pull out O2 (before it had a chance to oxidize the wine) and possibly CO2 (degass the wine). However, you may also pull out SO2, which protects the wine, and then you would have to add more k-meta.


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## Hokapsig (Mar 11, 2015)

Having worked at the largest Air Separation Unit in the US, let me offer my opinion on this.

I would personally use a medical grade Argon gas to blanket the wine (if possible because I can get a very good price). This is available at a medical gas distributor. Argon is a tad heavier than air and therefore will should displace air in a confined space. Nitorgen and helium are lighter than air and will move off of the wine surface and accumulate toward the top of the container. Carbon dioxide will dissolve into the wine, and in an enclosed container will eventually reach an equalibrium (making the wine fizzy as stated). Since no Oxygen is attached to Argon, the wine will not be fizzy as the Argon reachs equalibrium with the wine. 

But that's just my 2 cents.....

PS....Helium is in short supply and the price has increased dramatically. Plus it is extremely light and won't stay in the bottle for any amount of time...


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## sour_grapes (Mar 11, 2015)

Hokapsig said:


> PS....Helium is in short supply and the price has increased dramatically. Plus it is extremely light and won't stay in the bottle for any amount of time...



Not to mention that there is a finite supply of it, and it is an invaluable and irreplaceable resource. Using it for, say, balloons or wine is so utterly misguided, IMHO.


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## Floandgary (Mar 12, 2015)

As long as we're citing examples of inert gassing, how about this..... It has been a long standing practice of inflating tires of racing vehicles with Nitrogen. This practice has trickled over to the retail/consumer market as a sales gimmick. Rest assured that no effort is made to purge the existing atmospheric gasses from your tires. However the Nitrogen does do it's job of reducing heat buildup in the tire. Not that you'd have much heat buildup sloshing the carboy around  , but the point is that by displacing bad,bad O2 with something inert has to be of some benefit. And really, we're talking a relatively small volume, so gas 'er up! OR stick with the old fashion ways of reducing volume,,, smaller vessel, top-up with like wine 
Oh and lest we forget, "some" O2 presence is of benefit in the aging process. Just not in the amount akin to open-air


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## sour_grapes (Mar 12, 2015)

Floandgary said:


> However the Nitrogen does do it's job of reducing heat buildup in the tire.



What is the purported mechanism for this?


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## ibglowin (Mar 12, 2015)

Its a smaller molecule than O2 thus less expansion, with heat build up. Lots of good info here.


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## JohnT (Mar 12, 2015)

Wheeew! 

A lot of heavy science being set down here!

If I may, I just want to bring this down to the point of the home winemaker..

In most cases, sparging is pure evil for the home winemaker. Let me explain.....

Most home winemakers want to use inert gasses to compensate for a large amount of headspace. A lot of times, the home winemaker will add the gas and then walk away feeling that he/she is safe. 

This is simply not true unless the wine has a pressure tight, hermetic seal. If your wine is sealed using a fermentation lock, the inert gas will be expelled over time. This is due to temperature changes and barometric changes. 

I know of many cases where the home winemaker used inert gas (argon in all cases), and walked away for a month or two only to find that the wine had oxidized. 

You could make it a point of resparging the wine weekly, but opening up your wine weekly has its own dangers.

Another thing to consider is this. In a lot of cases, a little bit of O2 is actually a good thing for wine. A little bit of O2 will help to soften your wine and bring out flavor. If your wine is properly topped up, has a proper PH level, and has been properly treated with k-meta, sparging can actually inhibit the aging and softening process.

Sparging is all about what you want to achieve. It should never be used as an alternative to topping off a vessel when a fermentation trap is involved. 

Save your money on sparging. Put that money toward next year's grapes or kits instead!


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## sour_grapes (Mar 12, 2015)

ibglowin said:


> Lots of good info here.



Welll, there is a fair amount of bad info there, with one or two true things. To be fair, they do hedge the claims quite a bit, and conclude thusly:



> Overall, inflating tires with nitrogen won't hurt them and may provide some minimal benefits.



Not exactly a strong statement. And, I should note, they make absolutely no reference to heat build up in that article.




ibglowin said:


> Its a smaller molecule than O2 thus less expansion, with heat build up.



Not sure what you are saying here. Actually, N2 is a bit LARGER than O2. (Or did you mean lighter?) But this has nothing to do with heat capacity. (N2 does indeed, have a slightly larger, ~14% higher, heat capacity.) Or did you have an argument in mind based on, say, the Van der Waals equation? (I know that that equation is not accurate, but it is the first thing that popped into my mind that related molecular size and temperature.)


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## Floandgary (Mar 12, 2015)

Almost getting off-topic with this. Backing it up a bit, the topic was about airspace left in a carboy which had not been "topped-up" and the displacing of the O2 in that airspace with an inert gas (ok,ok not CO2) so as to prohibit possible excessive oxidation during the aging process. Reminder that, unless you are using the AIO or similar system, you will likely re-introduce O2 to the mix each time you do a rackover. If I were to consider a gas attack, I would simply put a hose in to the liquid level and purge the atmospheric air out for a couple of seconds (or more depending on how much volume we're talkin'), then pop the air lock on. Unless you've got an abnormally large airspace, I doubt that you'd have to worry about temperature swings blowing gas out and sucking air back in. Again I defer to the tried and trued,,,,, proper size vessel or top-up with like wine!!


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## ibglowin (Mar 12, 2015)

Talke a look at this article



sour_grapes said:


> Not sure what you are saying here. Actually, N2 is a bit LARGER than O2. (Or did you mean lighter?) But this has nothing to do with heat capacity. (N2 does indeed, have a slightly larger, ~14% higher, heat capacity.) Or did you have an argument in mind based on, say, the Van der Waals equation? (I know that that equation is not accurate, but it is the first thing that popped into my mind that related molecular size and temperature.)


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## Hokapsig (Mar 12, 2015)

sour_grapes said:


> Not to mention that there is a finite supply of it, and it is an invaluable and irreplaceable resource. Using it for, say, balloons or wine is so utterly misguided, IMHO.


 
Although any lost helium will accumulate in the atmosphere, it is considered an "uncompressible" due to the temperature required to liquefy the air and separate it from the other air constituents. Hydrogen is the other uncompressible, though the Hydrogen that we sent out was recovered from steel mill emissions by pulling out the other contaminants. Our Hydrogen plant was in Magog, Canada. 

We are using liquid nitrogen in the Marcellous Shale drilling instead of water. The nitrogen mixed with the sand and was able to move the material down the hole and as the nitrogen's temp increased, it went back into the air from which it came. No mess and no water to contaminate.


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## sour_grapes (Mar 12, 2015)

Hokapsig said:


> We are using liquid nitrogen in the Marcellous Shale drilling instead of water. The nitrogen mixed with the sand and was able to move the material down the hole and as the nitrogen's temp increased, it went back into the air from which it came. No mess and no water to contaminate.



Well that is cool! (Neither of the two puns was intended, honest!) I did not know that, and it is good to hear of a way to obviate the water contamination issue.




Hokapsig said:


> Although any lost helium will accumulate in the atmosphere,



Actually, that is not true. Helium is light enough that it will reach escape velocity, and be forever lost from the Earth. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_escape .) 

You probably know that the name "helium" means "of the sun." It got this name because it was an unknown element on Earth, and was only discovered from emission spectra of sunlight. If it had accumulated in the atmosphere, we would have discovered it terrestrially and named it something else!


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## sour_grapes (Mar 12, 2015)

sour_grapes said:


> Actually, N2 is a bit LARGER than O2.





ibglowin said:


> Talke a look at this article



Yes, that article you linked to carefully explains that my statement was correct.

I still don't understand the origins of any assertions about the thermal properties _vis a vis_ molecular size. (I do understand that they are not germane to winemaking, so this is just idle chatter.)


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## Floandgary (Mar 12, 2015)

Not so much that Nitrogen possesses a special property, but that when used in place of, in these cases O2, it subverts the effects of the O2. Simple as using liquid N in place of H2O


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## joeswine (Mar 12, 2015)

*Gas wars*

LIKE I stated the way I use* nitrogen* is to protect the wine for only a week or so nothing long term in the secondary ,then rack down to what ever vessel that's required, never had a problem .


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## stickman (Mar 13, 2015)

Joeswine, I agree, I use inert gas in the headspace short term when I know I'll be racking in a week or two. I may also use it to fill the receiving vessel headspace during racking, depending on the type of wine or age of the wine etc., if I feel it needs to be protected or not.


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