Accelerator Update

About the Fermilab Accelerators

Accelerator Water
Cooling water is as important to Fermi's physics program as are protons. Maybe it's more important. Without some kind of cooling most of the accelerator's equipment wouldn't last for more than a few minutes before tripping off. From power supplies to conventional magnets, excess heat must be disposed of. A simple fan and air movement can sometimes resolve this problem, but often more is needed.

Fermilab has many man-made cooling ponds. Robert Wilson, the physicist who envisioned and built Fermilab, didn't want the lab to look like an industrial complex with huge air towers, so he used the available space to provide necessary cooling by natural evaporation. This water is what we call Industrial Cooling Water (ICW). Our use of this water has little affect on the environment or the animals and fish that live around and in the ponds. The exception being that the pond water is a few degrees warmer than normal. In the winter the ponds seldom freeze over, which is why Canadian Geese often take a long stop here on their flight south.

This ICW is used in a heat exchange system where LCW from service buildings and accelerator tunnels, and office air conditioning systems meet, but never mix. A pond pump sends the ICW to the places it's needed and then returns it to the pond. CUB controls and monitors much of this process.

All the LCW systems are closed systems, which means the water is isolated, contained. You read about a couple of the systems earlier, the 55° and 95° LCW systems. Actually, there are many 95° systems and a few 55° systems. Obviously, the 55° system sends chilled water to devices that need precise temperature control. The 95° systems aren't necessarily kept at 95°, but are used for general cooling and sent to all the accelerators.

CUB takes some of the ICW and deionizes it, creating LCW for storage and future uses, like filling the MiniBooNE LCW system. An LCW system can cool the power supplies located in service building or cool conventional magnets down in the tunnel. Some areas, like LINAC have other water systems that use the 55° and 95° systems as a heat exchanger for their own local closed loop systems.

All of these water systems are monitored for temperature, pressure, flow, and leaks.