Refrigerator and Solenoid Run Summary August/September 1999

The helium refrigerator was cooled down and operated for the third time since its installation. D-Zero's 2 Tesla superconducting solenoid was cooled down and operated for its second time since its installation into the D-Zero detector. This engineering note summarizes the cryogenic aspects of the test run and performance measurements made. The main purpose of this run was to do field mapping of the solenoid with different combinations of field polarity on the Solenoid and CF iron magnets. This was accomplished. A second purpose was to test the lower field joint repair that was done in January 1999. This field joint had a measurable voltage drop across the soldered bus splice. The repair was an undoing of the joint, extensive cleaning of the bus, and then welding the splice. The repair was successful, no voltage drop was measured and the magnet behaved nicely. A parasitic purpose was to get some operating time on the refrigerator, measure the refrigeration performance, and measure the heat leak in the VLPC lines mounted on the detector platform. Refrigerator performance was spot checked, and was found to be 60 watts (10%) less than generic operating curves. At this level of performance, the operating margin for the full solenoid and VLPC system will be 75 watts (15%) which is somewhat uncomfortable from an operational stand point. The VLPC lines were operated and heat leak numbers of around 40 watts was measured for each pipe section including the supply u-tubes to the detector, the bayonet can, valve box on the platform and the piping back to the refrigerator valve box. Another purpose of the test run was to test the compatibility of other detector components with the new central magnetic field environment. I do not know the results of these tests