Gaseous Helium storage and management in the cryogenic system for the LHC

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is presently under construction at CERN. Its main components are superconducting magnets which will operate in superfluid helium requiring cryogenics on a length of about 24 km around the machine ring with a total helium inventory of about 100 tonnes. As no permanent liquid helium storage is foreseen and for reasons of investment costs, only half of the total helium content can be stored in gaseous form in medium pressure vessels. During the LHC operation part of these vessels will be used as helium buffer in the case of multiple magnet quenches. This paper describes the storage, distribution and management of the helium, the layout and the connection to the surface and underground equipment of the cryogenic system.