CO2 Cooling

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment (AMS) is an experiment to search in space for dark matter, missing matter and antimatter on the international space station. The Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment (LHCb) is one of the four experiments placed in the LHC particle accelerator and explores what happened after the Big Bang that allowed matter to survive and build the Universe.

Both experiments have detector cooling based on an evaporating cooling cycle. The cooling fluid that is used in these detector cooling systems makes the coolings systems different from what we are familiar with. Using liquid Carbon Dioxide as a cooling fluid, allows us to work with high pressure, small sized tubing and thus low weight systems. As a consequence of working with high pressure it is possible to regulate the cooling temperature of the detector at 0.3 degrees Celcius on a distance of 60 meters.

Caused by the succes of the CO₂ detector cooling systems of AMS and LHCb, CO₂ cooling has acquired popularity at institutes and universities.

The VELO detector in the LHCb experiment is cooled with CO₂
In July 2009 a collaboration is started up between institutes and universities that have interest in cooling plants with carbon dioxide as cooling fluid. The aim of this collaboration is to exchange knowledge about CO₂ cooling projects and to keep each other aware of the research and developments that are done.