We show that a low energy beta-beam facility can be used to search for sterile neutrinos by measuring the disappearance of electron anti-neutrinos. This channel is particularly sensitive since it allows us to use inverse beta decay as a detection reaction; thus it is free from hadronic uncertainties, provided the neutrino energy is below the pion production threshold. This corresponds to a choice of the Lorentz γ= 30 for the ~6He parent ion. Moreover, a disappearance measurement allows the constraint of sterile neutrino properties independently of any CP violating effects. A moderate detector size of a few 100 tons and ion production rates of ～ 2·10~(13) s~(-1) are sufficient to constrain mixing angles as small as sin~22θ = 10~(-2) at 99% confidence level.
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