Speaker
Caio Licciardi
(Laurentian University)
Description
The possible need of nearly 50 tonnes of 136Xe to search for neutrinoless double beta decay motivates an investigation of economical ways to enrich the xenon. The technique currently available at a limited number of manufacturers is centrifuge separation. Distillation is a potential alternative that relies on the isotopic variation of vapour pressures. Our group has provided the first credible measurement of these parameters for xenon using a 1.8 m tall still, and is finishing installation of an eightfold scaled-up version of the same still in the Cryopit at SNOLAB. This project is called Xe-Still and in this talk we will discuss its current status and near term goals.