A study of nonflammable ArCO2-hydrocarbon gas mixtures for limited streamer tubes

Presented by R. Battiston
https://doi.org/10.1016/0168-9002(89)90562-7Get rights and content

Abstract

The gas mixtures generally used until now in limited streamer tube detectors (Ar+C4H10 or Ar+CO2+C5H12) are very flammable when leaked into air. The safety issues are therefore very relevant for large-volume underground experiments. We have found a set of completely safe (i.e. nonflammable) ternary mixtures of the kind Ar + hydrocarbon + CO2 containing less than ∼ 5% of Ar and less than ∼ 10% of hydrocarbon. We tested C4H10, C5H12 and C6H14 as quenching agents. The main characteristics of the various mixtures have been measured: singles (untriggered) counting rate versus high voltage and with different dead times, and average charge. The stability of these mixtures is good, and their spurious streamer activity is compared with the standard binary or ternary mixture. We studied in particular the combination Ar(2.5%) + C4H10(9.5%) + CO2(88%). All the data suggest that this or a similar gas mixture can successfully replace standard flammable mixtures both in tracking devices and hadron calorimeters.

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Cited by (5)

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