In the last years, the gaseous particle detector community faced a new challenge: how to make eco-friendly detectors. Indeed, several gaseous detectors make use of greenhouse gases, which allow excellent detector performance and long-term stability but unfortunately, they have a high global warming potential. With a growing concern on climate change, also the particle detector community is looking for solutions that can balance detector performance with an eco-friendly approach.
In this context, CERN was the pioneer in developing strategies to reduce the use of greenhouse gases (GHG) in particle detection.
The main two strategies are based on the use of gas recirculation and recuperation systems.
In this way it is possible to recycle the gas mixture supplied to the detectors as well as to extract the GHGs from the gas mixture for further reuse. Thanks to these two approaches GHG emissions are in most of the cases reduced up to 95-100% at the LHC experiments.
By looking at the long-term operation and future particle detector applications, the search of alternative eco-friendly gas mixtures must be envisaged since price and availability of currently used GHGs could be a problem in the future (already in Europe a phase-down policy is on-going). The CERN EP-DT Gas team and different detector communities are working on R&D programs to study GHG alternatives for particle detectors. A big effort is on-going for the replacement of C2H2F4 for the Resistive Plate Chamber (RPC) detectors, which nowadays account for the majority of CERN particle detector emissions. Several eco-friendly gas mixtures have been identified and tested but finding a suitable replacement for the LHC experiments is particularly challenging. Studies are also on-going to find alternatives for the CF4, that is used in different types of particle detectors to prevent aging, to enhance time resolution or because of its scintillation photon emission properties.
An overview and status of the CERN strategies to reduce GHG from particle detectors will be given in this seminar, with a particular focus on the possible future eco-friendly gas mixtures.
CERN