Helium, as an indispensable scarce strategic resource in fields such as national defense, aerospace, and other key sectors, has long faced the severe challenges of supply shortage and high degree of dependence on imports in China. In order to clarify the development context, core achievements, and strategic directions of the helium research in China, in this study, by innovatively adopting a two-dimensional research framework with the combination of data-driven analysis + traditional review, we have conducted a comprehensive and in-depth analysis of the helium exploration and development in China. At the data-driven research level, 228 relevant literatures indexed in the CNKI (China National Knowledge Infrastructure) from 2000 are used as the data source. By integrating the knowledge graph and big data methods, this study reveals the disciplinary patterns and development rules of helium researches in China from four perspectives: publishing journals, funding sources, research institutions, and author collaboration networks. At the traditional review aspect, this study systematically summarizes the methodological systems, core achievements, and future directions of helium researches in China. The results show that academic papers published are highly concentrated in a few core journals by some leading institutions, with the major research fundings provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and multi-type collaborative fundings. In the aspect of author collaboration, there is a cluster pattern of research teams characterized by ″dominance of researchers from petroleum systems, collaboration of reseachers from geological survey institutions, and support of researchers from universities and research institutes″. There are multi-institutional, multi-hotspot, and multi-field collaborations, with several core research teams led by scholars such as Li Yuhong, Tao Shizhen, and Liu Quanyou, resulting in differences between ″high-output research type″ and coexisted ″in-depth research type″ in the industry-university-research collaboration models. In the aspect of research methodology, a multi-disciplinary integration system, with the center of geochemical analysis, support of the comprehensive geological-geophysical-geochemical evaluation, and target of the resource quantity estimation, has been developed. In the aspect of core achievements, three genetic types of helium in China are identified, with the crust-derived helium as the main type of helium, and the crust-mantle mixed-sourced and mantle-derived helium as the supplementary types of helium. Three helium supply models, including the bedrock-derived helium supply, combined bedrock-sedimentary rock helium supply, and sedimentary rock helium supply, are established. The helium enrichment rule of ″proximal to helium source, adjacent to faults, and high-position in low-potential zones″ and the four-factor controlling framework of ″source-migration-accumulation-preservation″ are proposed. The helium migration laws of ″three states and three modes″ and reservoir-forming models such as ″the uplifting exsolution type″ and ″the displacement exsolution type″ are revealed. The regional distribution pattern of ″the enriched helium resources in central and western China and the dispersed helium resources in eastern China″ is clarified. Several super-large helium-rich gasfields, such as the Dongsheng gasfield in the Ordos Basin and the Hetianhe gasfield in the Tarim Basin, have been discovered. Five key research and political priorities, including the refined identification and quantification of helium source rocks, numerical simulation of migration and accumulation under four-field coupling, efficient purification technology for low-abundance helium, national strategic reserve and industrial chain synergy, and special exploration and technological breakthroughs for special types of helium reservoirs such as shale, coalbed, and mantle-derived reservoirs, have been proposed. Through this two-dimensional research paradigm, this study achieves the quantitative characterization of the current status of helium researches and the systematic integration of theoretical achievements in China and provides a scientific basis for the exploration and development, technological breakthroughs, and strategic layout of helium resources in China.
LI et al. (Thu,) studied this question.