Towards Sealed Resistive Plate Chambers

The mitigation of human-induced climate change is of crucial importance for the sustainability of humankind. For this aim the RPC community has exerted considerable effort over the last decade to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases from our detectors. These included searching for new eco-friendly gases, implementing recovery and/or recirculation systems, improving gastightness and using new materials and approaches in detector conception and operation for the reduction of gas flow rates. Along this line of work, we present here an RPC architecture aimed at a dramatic reduction of gas use in chambers meant for low-rate operation. Two chambers were tested for more than six months with zero gas flow showing no evidence of time-related effects, allowing to consider that permanently sealed RPCs may be within reach, with obvious practical and environmental advantages.