Urania

The Underground Argon (UAr) procurement chain starts from the Urania facility at the Kinder Morgan CO₂ facility in Cortez, Colorado, U.S.A. Urania is the first extraction and chemical purification plant of UAr. The plant extracts the gas stream from underground, with an initial concentration of Ar in the inlet CO₂ stream of 440ppm. The plant is designed to recover 95% or more of the UAr, and purify it (removing impurities like methane) at a maximum rate of 330 kg per day, to a purity of 99.99%. The plant has two separate sections: a first section for the separation of a raw argon current from the crude CO₂ gas, and a second argon purification unit, based on cryogenic distillation technology, designed to reach the required purity.

DarkSide-50 established and operated a plant that extracted argon gas from underground at the Kinder Morgan facility in Colorado. The extracted gas was then further purified at Fermilab before it was used in DarkSide-50. Measurements of Argon-39 decays in DarkSide-50 established that underground argon has a factor of >1400x less argon-39 relative to atmospheric argon, enabling the 50 tonne DS-20k experiment.