Binary ice, a novel technique for high performance phase change cooling

The cooling of a silicon tracker at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a demanding task. The silicon tracker has to operate at a temperature below 0 C. The small temperature gradients allowed in the tracker volume, as well as the small liquid flow rates allowed, makes the exploitable heat capacity of water marginal. The use of a Binary-Ice{reg{underscore}sign} cooling system is an attempt to address this problem. With the use of a Binary-Ice suspension, a significant improvement in temperature uniformity along a homogeneously heated tube has been observed compared to that of liquid only. This improved uniformity is caused partly by a significantly reduced temperature build-up in the bulk liquid, attributed to the absorbed heat of melting. In addition, the presence of the ice crystals causes the heat transfer coefficient to be superior to similar coolants without ice where the heat transfer coefficient is calculated from the mean liquid temperature.