Abstract

There are five cryogenic plants at Jefferson Lab which support the LINAC, experiment hall end-stations and test facility. The majority of JLab’s helium inventory, which is around 15 tons, is allocated in the LINAC cryo-modules, with the majority of the balance of helium distributed at the cryogenic-plant level mainly as stored gas and liquid for stable operation. Due to the organic evolution of the five plants and independent actions within the experiment halls, the traditional inventory management strategy suffers from rapid identification of potential leaks. This can easily result in losses many times higher than the normally accepted (average) loss rate. A real-time program to quickly identify potential excessive leakage was developed and tested. This program was written in MATLAB© for portability, easy diagnostics and modification. It interfaces directly with EPICS to access the cryogenic system state, and with and NIST REFPROP© for real fluid properties. This program was validated against the actual helium offloaded into the system. The present paper outlines the details of the inventory monitoring program, its validation and a sample of the achieved results.

Highlights

  • Since 1988, Jefferson Lab (JLab) has maintained continuous operation of its cryogenic plants

  • The present paper describes the development and deployment procedure of a real-time online helium inventory monitoring program for the JLab cryogenic systems and loads

  • Due to the sub-atmospheric loads at Cryogenic Test Facility (CTF), it is more prone to contamination and as such is equipped with its own warm gas storage and purification system

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Summary

Introduction

Since 1988, Jefferson Lab (JLab) has maintained continuous operation of its cryogenic plants. These plants have included a wide variation of capacity from 200 W at 4.5 K to 4.6 kW at 2.1 K. There are five different cryogenic plants at JLab supporting various loads. Due to the organic evolution of the cryogenic systems (and loads) over the years (pre-12 GeV and 12 GeV era), it can be very difficult to confine a specific cryo-plant’s helium inventory and identify potential leaks. The present paper describes the development and deployment procedure of a real-time online helium inventory monitoring program for the JLab cryogenic systems and loads. It outlines the results (helium inventory tracking and identification of potential areas for major leaks) achieved so far with the developed program

Background
Program development
Results and discussion
Conclusion
Full Text
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