BepiColombo [0] uses 581 kg of Xe gas for its electric propulsion. I remember reading at the time this was being built that it consumed a measurable portion of the global xenon production for that year. This post reminded me to look that up, and it seems to be only ~1% of the ~50 tons, which is quite a bit less than I remember but still quite significant for a single application to use a non-trivial amount of the supply.
reply[0]https://sci.esa.int/web/bepicolombo/-/60642-bepicolombo-mtm-...
Given that ~100 million tons of oxygen are produced annually, extracting all the xenon from that air would yield about 170 tons/year. So there's a bit of room for growth.
replyThe BepiColombo number is similar, I think, to the amount of xenon made annually in nuclear reactors (where it occurs in spent fuel as the result of fission.)
I think it might have taken a larger percentage of high-grade ultrapure xenon, a narrower market than the global bulk supply. A 1% impurity is fine if you are using xenon for welding, not so much if you are firing zenon plasma at a grid carrying a few hundred volts. A little bit of o2 in there and your grid would be rust very quickly.
replyDoes anyone use xenon for welding? Argon, yes, but xenon is five orders of magnitude less common in air.
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