For the Hilumi upgrade for Cern, new superconductive links are needed from the LHC tunnel to the higher level power supplies. Because of the already very crowded tranverse tunnels and a limited time slot for installation of the lines, this cannot be done with normal rigid piping.

Taking standard values for heatload for flexible lines into account it was not possible to make it flexible as well, or specification boundaries for flexible lines must be broken. For this Cern has specified flexible lines with a heatload specification equal to rigid piping, something of which you would normally say this is impossible.

Cryoworld accepted this challenge, feeling confident we had the knowledge to make it happen. Cern gave us the PO in 2016, we where to design and fabricate two 60m vacuum insulated hoses with an inner bore of 100mm. one so called passive type meaning a inner flexible with a outer flexible vacuum jacket. One so called actively cooled flexible, inner flexible with vacuum jacked, covered by a shield return line with again a vacuum jacket. The active type was constructed as a fallback option when the passive flexible would prove to be insufficient.

Cern has rigorously tested the passive type flexible since half 2017 for over a year now. So far the results show that we are within the specification. (as the only of three tested renown suppliers)