Following a 6-year collaboration with internationally leading groups such as LBNL, Cornell and Stanford Universities in the USA, HZDR-Rossendorf and DESY in Germany and TRIUMF in Canada, ASTeC has achieved a major milestone whereby a new optimised Superconducting accelerator has been tested and transported to the ALICE facility. The two-cavity cryomodule development which has been coordinated by ASTeC and engineered and integrated at the Daresbury Engineering Technology Centre has recently undergone a series of offline cryogenic tests to verify its operability prior to its installation. During February, it is intended that the cryomodule will be cooled down to 2 K and RF cavity conditioning will commence. Once conditioned on ALICE, the full flexibility of the cryomodule is expected to be realised, including: high gradient demonstration, at least a doubling of cryogenic operational efficiency compared to the existing accelerator and an increased level of flexibility which is hoped to deliver an additional order of magnitude improvement in RF power delivery efficiency for ERL accelerators.
