RHIC cryogenics

An integrated helium cryogenic system was designed with the specific performance goal of cooling and refrigerating the cryogenic magnets to below their nominal operating temperature. These magnets make up the steering and focusing elements for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). In addition to meeting the accelerator demands, reliability, flexibility, safety, and ease of operation were key considerations during the design phase of the project. The refrigerator, with a capacity of 25 kW at about 4 K, was originally designed to match the load for the Colliding Beam Accelerator Project. The existing refrigerator, along with its complimentary warm compressor system was reconfigured slightly to meet the cooling process cycle design for RHIC. The original VAX based process control system was also adapted for RHIC, and later expanded upon to integrate a new programmable logic controller based ring resident control system, hence forming a common system to monitor and control all cryogenic components.