The New Control System for the Vacuum of ISOLDE

The On-Line Isotope Mass Separator (ISOLDE) is a facility dedicated to the production of radioactive ion beams for nuclear and atomic physics. From ISOLDE vacuum sectors to the pressurized exhaust gas storage tanks there are up to five stages of pumping for a total of more than one hundred pumps including turbo-molecular, cryogenic, dry, membrane and oil pumps. The ISOLDE vacuum control system is critical; the volatile radioactive elements present in the exhaust gases and the high and ultra high vacuum pressure specifications require a complex control and interlock system. This paper describes the reengineering of the control system developed using the CERN UNICOS-CPC framework. An additional challenge has been the usage of the UNICOS-CPC in a vacuum domain for the first time. The process automation provides multiple operating modes (rough pumping, bake-out, high vacuum pumping, regeneration for cryo-pumped sectors, venting, etc). The control system is composed of local controllers driven by PLC (logic, interlocks) and a SCADA application (operation, alarms monitoring and diagnostics).