INFN-LNF Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati
The 4th of July the installation process of a brand new compressor for the DAΦNE cryogenic plant has started.
The original KAESER FS 440 has been working beautifully for 20 years, almost continuously, compressing Helium between 10 and 14 bars.
It has hit more than 120.000 working hours, at least twice the limit of any other KAESER machine with the original compressing screw, just on scheduled maintenance.
With a little sadness at the end of last year we decided that retiring time had arrived. This was the strategy to manage the risk of a major failure that could stop accelerators activities for months.
In addition the new KAESER ESD 442 model will allow considerable cost saving in power supply and heat recovery. The pay back period of this operation is two years and a half.
The plant re-commissioning and magnets cool down is scheduled starting from the 18th of July.