Fermi Research Alliance LLC (FRA), which manages and operates the U.S. DOE Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory known as Fermilab, signed a contract for Air Products to supply a custom nitrogen liquefier equipment package to support research of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, DUNE.
The DUNE experiment will take place more than a mile below the surface of the South Dakota Black Hills located at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) and at Fermilab’s research campus in Illinois. U.S. based Fermilab is leading the participation of 35 countries in the DUNE project.
“Air Products is excited to bring our experience and advanced technology in the area of industrial gases to help DUNE with this important work,” said Dr. Samir J. Serhan, Air Products’ Chief Operating Officer. “Air Products’ engineers have developed an innovative solution incorporating several parts of our business to create a nitrogen refrigeration system that will be transported deep underground and modularly assembled in the underground caverns of the SURF site.”
The vast caverns of DUNE will house large cryostats filled with liquid argon, each the size of a five-story building. These large argon cryostats will enable the detection of neutrinos coming from a proton accelerator beam generated about 800 miles away in Batavia, Illinois. The nitrogen liquefaction system, designed by Air Products, will be used to continually cool and re-condense the argon that boils off from the neutrino detection system.
The customized nitrogen refrigeration equipment package includes technology from several Air Products business units including Rotoflow turbomachinery equipment, PRISM Membrane Solutions for nitrogen generation, and Air Products’ Cold Box technology.
DUNE represents the largest international physics experiment in the study of neutrinos. Physicists believe the study of these tiny, subatomic particles at DUNE could help the world understand the fundamentals of matter and the origins of the universe. The work includes over 1,000 scientists from more than 35 counties.
“Each of the large DUNE cryostats will contain 17,500 metric tons of ultrapure liquid argon to look for particle tracks,” said David Montanari, a Fermilab engineer who works on the project. “A nitrogen refrigeration system is needed to initially fill the cryostats with liquid argon (argon is transported in gas phase underground) and keep the argon as a liquid by recondensing the boiloff. For DUNE to be successful, we need to maintain impurity concentrations in the argon at less than a trillionth of a percent. The nitrogen refrigeration system is an essential step to achieving that.”
