| THE ING NEWSLETTER | No. 5, October 2001 |
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SCIENCE |
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| Previous: | First Results from the Rayleigh Laser Guide Star Project | Up: | Table of Contents | Next: | WHT Scientific Impact |
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| Dragons Breath Cooling for ING, TNG & NOT CCDs |  |
Alan Chopping (Head of Site Services, ING)
As the nearest commercial supplier for liquid nitrogen for the Observatory is located in Tenerife, ING produces liquid nitrogen on the Roque site, to provide cooling for all its CCDs. This has enabled us to eliminate the logistic problems of transporting large liquid volumes of nitrogen between islands, and has been found to be more economical. Also from the surplus produced we have been able to supply our neighbouring institutions.
While this arrangement has worked successfully for the past decade, over the past couple of years demand for liquid nitrogen has grown to accommodate development work, larger CCDs and instrumentation at all the ORM institutions. This resulted in the existing plant working for long periods, leaving little time for maintenance and the threat of losing telescope time for us, and our ORM partners if a major breakdown occurred.
The justification for purchasing a second plant was made by an agreement between the ING, TNG and NOT in which each would pay a third of the provision of a second hand plant. Fortunately the Dutch supply company "Sterling Cryogenics" were in the process of decommissioning a suitable plant in Hong Kong. There, the plant had been used as part of a theme park attraction called "The Dark Ride" providing liquid nitrogen as simulated smoke for a large dragons breath.
The plant was then flow
back to Holland where it was fully serviced before arriving on La Palma
during March. Since then the plant has been installed and connected to
a new 3,000 litre storage vessel. This unit in tandem with the original
plant now ensures sufficient liquid nitrogen for our entire site needs
at the ORM.
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The ING liquid nitrogen plant. [ JPEG | TIFF ] |
Email contact: Alan Chopping (akc@ing.iac.es)
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