Radon removal from gaseous xenon with activated charcoal

Many low background experiments using xenon need to remove radioactive radon to improve their sensitivities. However, no method of continually removing radon from xenon has been described in the literature. We studied a method to remove radon from xenon gas through an activated charcoal trap. From our measurements we infer a linear relationship between the mean propagation velocity vRn of radon and vXe of xenon in the trap with vRn/vXe=(0.96±0.10)×10−3vRn/vXe=(0.96±0.10)×10−3 at −85 °C. As the mechanism for radon removal in this charcoal trap is its decay, knowledge of this parameter allows us to design an efficient radon removal system for the XMASS experiment. The verification of this system found that it reduces radon by a factor of 0.07, which is in line with its expected average retention time of 14.8 days for radon.