An on-line acoustic fluorocarbon coolant mixture analyzer for the ATLAS silicon tracker

The ATLAS silicon tracker community foresees an upgrade from the present octafluoropropane (C₃F₈) evaporative cooling fluid - to a composite fluid with a probable 10-20% admixture of hexafluoroethane (C₂F₆). Such a fluid will allow a lower evaporation temperature and will afford the tracker silicon substrates a better safety margin against leakage current-induced thermal runaway caused by cumulative radiation damage as the luminosity profile at the CERN Large Hadron Collider increases. Central to the use of this new fluid is a new custom-developed speed-of-sound instrument for continuous real-time measurement of the C₃F₈/C₂F₆ mixture ratio and flow. An acoustic vapour mixture analyzer/flow meter with new custom electronics allowing ultrasonic frequency transmission through gas mixtures has been developed for this application. Synchronous with the emission of an ultrasound `chirp´ from an acoustic transmitter, a fast readout clock (40 MHz) is started. The clock is stopped on receipt of an above threshold sound pulse at the receiver. Sound is alternately transmitted parallel and anti-parallel with the vapour flow for volume flow measurement from transducers that can serve as acoustic transmitters or receivers. In the development version, continuous real-time measurement of C₃F₈/C₂F₆ flow and calculation of the mixture ratio is performed within a graphical user interface developed in PVSS-II, the Supervisory, Control and Data Acquisition standard chosen for LHC and its experiments at CERN. The described instrument has numerous potential applications - including refrigerant leak detection, the analysis of hydrocarbons, vapour mixtures for semiconductor manufacture and anesthetic gas mixtures.