A Cryogenic Test Station for Subcooling Helium Heat Exchangers for LHC

The superconducting magnets of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be cooled at 1.9 K by distributed cooling loops where counter-flow heat exchangers will be integrated. To qualify potential suppliers for the 250-units series production, prototypes of various technologies have been selected by CERN and a test station was set up at CEA-Grenoble. This test station, is constituted of a cryostat allowing an easy access to the heat exchanger to be tested as well as very low pressure pumping facilities.