Reduction of helium loss from a superconducting accelerating cavity during initial cool-down and cryostat exchange by pre-cooling the re-condensing cryostat

A Zero-Boil-Off (ZBO) cryostat is designed to realize a compact, stand-alone cryogenic system for the AIST superconducting accelerator (SCA). Under normal operation there is no evaporative helium loss from the cryomodule and therefore operating costs associated with the supply of liquid helium can be eliminated. The only significant loss of helium from the module occurs during the initial cavity cool-down procedure or when the re-condensing cryostat is replaced. It takes about 3 h to cool down the cryostat head from room temperature (300 K) to 4 K. During this time around 100 L of liquid helium is lost due to evaporation. By pre-cooling the cryostat inside a low heat load vacuum tube before transfer to the cryomodule, this evaporative loss could be essentially eliminated, significantly reducing the volume of liquid helium required for the initial cryomodule cool-down. The pre-cooling system also provides an efficient method to test the cryostat prior to use.