Air Innovations – the leader in custom environmental control solutions for temperature, humidity, filtration, and pressure – announced the availability of a new case study in which the company designed and built a linear accelerator cooling system for a silicon pixel sub-detector (PXL) inside the “STAR” detector.
The STAR detector — a Solenoid Tracker designed to search for signatures of quark-gluon plasma (QGP) and part of a Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) — tracks thousands of particles produced by each ion collision in the RHIC in an effort to study what the universe may have looked like in the first few moments after its creation.
The STAR detector and RHIC required cleanroom-quality air where ambient conditions ranged from 65°F to 85°F with 10% to 50% RH. Space restrictions also came into play, as the original, undersized ductwork limited available ventilation.
Overall, Air Innovations was able to manufacture and environmental control unit (ECU) that was able to adapt to and navigate the original, undersized ductwork. The ECU had design output conditions of 72°F ± 2°F and <50% RH in addition to a 300 – 600 CFM variable operational range.
Read the full version of this environmental control case study.