Towards energy efficient particle accelerators
Inductive Output Tube (IOT). Image credit: CPI.
The 2nd Workshop on Energy for Sustainable Science at Research Infrastructures was held the 23-25 October 2013 at CERN to discuss the challenges and potential solutions in energy efficiency. The workshop featured a talk from the EnEfficient network, the EuCARD-2 Work Package 3, which presented its plan to stimulate innovation in the energy efficiency of particle accelerators in the coming years.
Scarcity of resources, along with rising energy costs and climate change are ever growing concerns for the next generation of large accelerator based facilities. Indeed, the much increased performance of proposed new facilities comes together with anticipated increased power consumption. The network EnEfficient builds on this recent consciousness that accelerators have to be sustainable over the long term and socially acceptable by reducing their environmental impact and their energy consumption. It aims to federate the initiatives of research institutions and universities towards an efficient utilization of electrical power in 5 different areas: heat recovery, efficiency of Radio Frequency (RF) power generation, virtual power plant (improved adaptation to varying supply situation on grid), energy storage systems and low power beam transport channels.
As one of the networking activities a workshop on efficient RF generation will be organized in the spring of 2014. The picture shows the concept design of a multi-beam Inductive Output Tube (IOT). IOTs typically reach higher efficiency than traditional klystrons particularly where klystrons need to be operated below saturation. The utilization of this technology for the accelerator of the European Spallation Source (ESS) is presently being investigated which would result in electrical power savings of 3 MW. European
Additional participants are sought and are welcome in all themes of the EnEfficient network.
