2022 marked another great year for the tomography beamline at SESAME. After the design and procurement stages, factory acceptance tests and delivery, we started on the physical installation of the beamline at SESAME. In the spring, the beamline hutches were delivered and constructed. Then, during the autumn shutdowns, all teams focused on installing the components inside the storage ring.
| In January, the second part of BEATS detector stage arrived @esrfsynchrotron. Primary assembly and tests were carried out at BM05 before dispatching to @SESAME_Jordan. This picture shows the top part of the detector stage where 2 detectors will be fitted. The stages allow accurate horizontal and vertical positioning. |  |
| In February, the SESAME Cultural Heritage Day (hosted by DESY) was a big success bringing together over 240 participants from 39 countries by remote access.
The event included talks by Mohamed Waheed Ali, Executive manager of the conservation centre at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, Marine Cotte, scientist at ESRF, the European Synchrotron, Maram Naes , Technical University Berlin, Eberhard Mahnke and Verena Lepper from the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection, Fatima Marïi of the University of Jordan, Jakata Kudakwashe from ESRF, the European Synchrotron and Gonca Dardeniz Arikan from the University of Istanbul.
“I would be delighted if cross-border, cross-culture collaborations are established to foster more understanding among cultures” – Rolf Dieter Heuer, Chairman of SESAME SAC.
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Slide from the presentation by Maram Naes on research into the deterioration of ancient paints found at Petra, Jordan. |
| During the Cultural Heritage Workshop, Italy’s ambassador to Jordan, Fabio Cassese, inaugurated the new laboratory for Cultural Heritage at SESAME. |  |
| In March, six weeks ahead of schedule, the radiation safety hutches around the optics and experimental zones of the tomography beamline were mounted.
The beamline hutches were designed by ALBA, ESRF and SESAME and manufactured by German company INNOSPEC. |
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| In April, factory acceptance tests of the BEATS source – a three-pole wiggler – were carried out at KYMA, followed by fiducialisation of the source.
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| April also saw the installation of the big data processing systems for BEATS first data.
In spring 2021, BEATS launched a call for tender for the supply, installation and commissioning of a centralised parallel file system and CPU/GPU cluster. In September 2021, the tender board awarded the contract to Jordanian company General Computers & Electronics Co. The hardware for the BEATS centralised parallel file system storage CPU-GPU cluster, InfiniBand switches and back-end server were delivered in February 2022 and site acceptance tests validated all the specifications in March.
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| In May, a delegation from BEATS visited the premises of Optique Peter in Lyon, France to oversee the assembly of the twin X-ray microscope. |  |
| In June, factory acceptance tests were conducted on the double multilayer monochromator at CINEL in Italy. The device passed all the motion tests on Bragg stages. |  |
| Witness tests were carried out on the Front-End at JJ-X-ray in Denmark. |  |
| June also saw the arrival of the BEATS source, a 3-pole wiggler, at SESAME and its unboxing. This device will enable an increase in critical energy to around 12 keV and will make it possible to use energies of up to 50 keV. |  |
| In August, the Front-End was delivered to SESAME, ready to be installed during the autumn shutdowns. |  |
| The SESAME Motion group set up the motorized axes that control the X-ray filters on the Front-End. They include aluminium, molybdenum, copper and gold foils. |  |
| The SESAME Motion and Mechanics & Alignment teams carried out the fiducialisation of the refurbished Front-End primary slits received from the ESRF, the European Synchrotron. |  |
| SESAME vacuum engineer, Abid Ur Rehman, spent two weeks at the ESRF, the European Synchrotron, in France to learn about the activation of NEG coating. He carried out simulations and pressure calculations on the vacuum chamber that will be installed on the BEATS source. |  |
| In September, installation started inside the SESAME storage ring tunnel and continued through until December.
The SESAME storage ring roof was opened to make way for the installation of the BEATS source and Front-End. |
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| Anchors were placed on the storage ring floor to secure the wiggler. | 
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| The wiggler was lifted into the storage ring, installed and aligned. |
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| Next, the Front-End was unboxed and installed piece by piece in the storage ring tunnel, then aligned.
The SESAME Motion group installed the cooling circuits. |
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| Then the Front-End was baked at 150°C to chase out the last air or gas particles and create good vacuum conditions for unhindered circulation of the beam. |
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| Finally, the junction between the storage ring and the beamline was radiation sealed with lead slabs and pellets. |
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| In November, the BEATS wiggler was tested to make sure it had no disturbing effect on the SESAME machine.
The tests concluded that the SESAME storage ring tolerates the BEATS X-ray source with only minor corrections.
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Thank you for your continued support of BEATS.
2023 will be another exciting year with the hand-over of the beamline to SESAME and the end of the project phase.
The first months will be dedicated to installation on the beamline side, and beamline commissioning with first friendly users. The inauguration will take place on 6th June 2023. #BEATSisReal!
Keep an eye on our website and follow us on Twitter for the latest news and updates @BEATSeu1.