The NML cryogenic plant cools two individually cryostated superconducting radio frequency (SRF) capture cavities and one prototype ILC cryomodule with eight SRF cavities. This complex accelerates electrons at 150 MeV for the Integrable Optics Test Accelerator (IOTA) ring, located at the Fermilab Accelerator Science and Technology (FAST) facility. The cryogenic plant is composed of two nitrogen precooled Tevatron satellite refrigerators, two Mycom 2016C compressors, a cryogenic distribution system, a Frick purifier compressor, two charcoal bed adsorber purifiers, and a liquid ring vacuum pump with a roots booster. The SRF cavities are immersed in a 2.0 K liquid helium bath, shielded with a 5 K gaseous helium shield and a liquid nitrogen cooled thermal shield. Since 2019, this R&D accelerator complex has gone through four science runs with an average duration of 12 months. Operational experience for each run, availability metrics, performance data and common outages are presented in this paper.
@article{arxiv.2506.20663,
title = {Operational Experience of the NML Cryogenic Plant at the FAST Test Facility},
author = {Timothy Wallace and Joaquim Creus-Prats and Joseph Hurd and Michael J White and Jerry Makara and Liujin Pei and Benjamin Hansen and Jay Theilacker and Rick Bossert and Alexander Martinez and James K Santucci and Sasha Romanov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.20663},
year = {2025}
}