Removing krypton from xenon by cryogenic distillation to the ppq level

6533b82efe1ef96bd1293045

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Removing krypton from xenon by cryogenic distillation to the ppq level

E. Aprile J. Aalbers F. Agostini M. Alfonsi F. D. Amaro M. Anthony F. Arneodo P. Barrow L. Baudis B. Bauermeister M. L. Benabderrahmane T. Berger P. A. Breur A. Brown E. Brown S. Bruenner G. Bruno R. Budnik L. Bütikofer J. Calvén J. M. R. Cardoso M. Cervantes D. Cichon D. Coderre A. P. Colijn J. Conrad J. P. Cussonneau M. P. Decowski P. Perio P. D. Gangi A. D. Giovanni S. Diglio E. Duchovni G. Eurin J. Fei A. D. Ferella A. Fieguth D. Franco W. Fulgione A. Gallo Rosso M. Galloway F. Gao M. Garbini C. Geis L. W. Goetzke L. Grandi Z. Greene C. Grignon C. Hasterok E. Hogenbirk C. Huhmann R. Itay B. Kaminsky G. Kessler A. Kish H. Landsman R. F. Lang D. Lellouch L. Levinson M. L. Calloch Q. Lin S. Lindemann M. Lindner J. A. M. Lopes A. Manfredini I. Maris T. M. Undagoitia J. Masbou F. V. Massoli D. Masson D. Mayani Y. Meng M. Messina K. Micheneau B. Miguez A. Molinario M. Murra J. Naganoma K. Ni U. Oberlack S. E. A. Orrigo P. Pakarha B. Pelssers R. Persiani F. Piastra J. Pienaar M.-c. Piro V. Pizzella G. Plante N. Priel L. Rauch S. Reichard C. Reuter A. Rizzo S. Rosendahl N. Rupp R. Saldanha J. M. F. Santos G. Sartorelli M. Scheibelhut S. Schindler J. Schreiner M. Schumann L. S. Lavina M. Selvi P. Shagin E. Shockley M. Silva H. Simgen M. Sivers A. Stein D. Thers A. Tiseni G. Trinchero C. Tunnell N. Upole H. Wang Y. Wei C. Weinheimer J. Wulf J. Ye Y. Zhang I. Cristescu

subject

7. Clean energy

description

The XENON1T experiment aims for the direct detection of dark matter in a detector filled with 3.3 tons of liquid xenon. In order to achieve the desired sensitivity, the background induced by radioactive decays inside the detector has to be sufficiently low. One major contributor is the β -emitter 85 Kr which is present in the xenon. For XENON1T a concentration of natural krypton in xenon natKr/Xe<200ppq (parts per quadrillion, 1 ppq =10−15mol/mol) is required. In this work, the design, construction and test of a novel cryogenic distillation column using the common McCabe–Thiele approach is described. The system demonstrated a krypton reduction factor of 6.4⋅10⁵ with thermodynamic stability at process speeds above 3 kg/h. The resulting concentration of natKr/Xe<26ppq is the lowest ever achieved, almost one order of magnitude below the requirements for XENON1T and even sufficient for future dark matter experiments using liquid xenon, such as XENONnT and DARWIN.

year	journal	country	edition	language
2017-01-01