Speaker
Description
This is an introduction to the new Liquid Xenon R&D facility currently under construction at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU Mainz) in the new Centre for Fundamental Physics (CFP-II). The Xenon liquefaction facility is designed to store, purify, and distribute up to 500kg of liquid xenon to two neighboring laboratories eventually. The liquid xenon can be recuperated by gravity in a cryogenic storage tank, which also serves as a pressure vessel to safely contain the gas at room temperature. Initially, one laboratory will be equipped with a complete cooling system, while the connection to the second laboratory has only been prepared for a potential future extension. In this presentation I will describe the different parts of the facility and some new solutions for the design of the storage tank cooling system. The maximum flow in the purification system is about 20 l/min of Xenon, corresponding to about 500 kg of purified Xenon per day. The liquefaction of the Xenon is done by a thermoacoustic pulse tube refrigerator (PTR) cryocooler (max power 120-140 W @T=160-180 K), supported by an auxiliary LN2 cryocooler that can provide up to 170 W of additional cooling power, or can be used in place of the PTR in case of power failure. Xenon purification is performed in the gas phase, making use of a custom-built plate heat exchanger, reducing up the 90% the required cooling power of about 600 W in total. The remaining 10% of cooling power (60 W) is provided by the cryocooler. A fast recovery system provides safe operation and can freeze xenon in the central cryostat with a cooling power of 500 W.
