Cool aid for a Big Bang; EXPERTISE: City firm supplies equipment for experiment.

Byline: By Jon Griffin

A BIRMINGHAM engineering firm has played a key role in reliving history from the dawn of creation - supplying equipment for the Big Bang.

The pounds 1.3 billion project by CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, chose HydraPower dynamics of Ladywood to provide specialist pipework.

The pipework was used to cool energy detecting crystals inside a 20,000 tonne CMS detector as high as a six-storey office building and constructed underground.

Scientists and engineers at CERN, near Geneva, visited many companies in Europe to seek out a firm capable of making and supplying a UK designed pipework system to meet the specific cooling requirements of the crystal detectors.

But the CERN scientists were unsuccessful until they found HydraPower dynamics in St Marks Street, Ladywood.

The company, which has a turnover of more than pounds 8 million annually and manufactures hose and tube assemblies, surface coating and aircraft test equipment, was visited by scientists from CERN who gave a detailed presentation of what they wanted to achieve with the special piping.

Staff at HydraPower dynamics were asked to work with the scientists and engineers to help solve the problem of cooling the CMS end cap detector.

The pipes had to be trialled and tested with every other criteria demanded in the manufacture, including X-raying the joining points.

Patrick Browne, managing director of HydraPower-dynamics, said: "To be involved with CERN shows our technical expertise and the scope of our technology.

"They had searched Europe to find a company that could resolve their difficulty with the piping. We did not just give them a product, we also gave them some technical assistance with calculations for the high level of cooling they wanted in the joint design with CERN scientists."