R&D on divertor plasma facing components at the Institute for Plasma Research

Abstract

This paper is focused on various aspects of the development and testing of water cooled divertor PFCs. Divertor PFCs are mainly designed to absorb the heat and particle fluxes outflowing from the core plasma of fusion devices like ITER. The Divertor and First Wall Technology Development Division at the Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), India, is extensively working on development and testing of divertor plasma facing components (PFCs). Tungsten and graphite macro-brush type test mock-ups were produced using vacuum brazing furnace technique and tungsten monoblock type of test mock-ups were obtained by hot radial pressing (HRP) technique. Heat transfer performance of the developed test mock-ups was tested using high heat flux tests with different heat load conditions as well as the surface temperature monitoring using transient infrared thermography technique. Recently we have established the High Heat Flux Test Facility (HHFTF) at IPR with an electron gun EH300V (M/s Von Ardenne Anlagentechnik GmbH, Germany) having maximum power 200 kW. Two tungsten monoblock type test mock-ups were probed using HHFTF. Both of the test mock-ups successfully sustained 316 thermal cycles during high heat flux (HHF) tests. The test mock-ups were non-destructively tested using infrared thermography before and after the HHF tests. In this note we describe the detailed procedure used for testing macro-brush and monoblock type test mock-ups using in-house transient infrared thermography set-up. An acceptance criteria limit was defined for small scale macro-brush type of mock-ups using DTrefmax value and the surface temperature measured during the HHF tests. It is concluded that the heat transfer behavior of a plasma facing component was checked by the HHF tests followed by transient IR thermography. The acceptance criteria DTrefmax limit for a graphite macro-brush mock-up was found to be ~3°C while for a tungsten macro-brush mock-up it was ~5°C.

Keywords

• divertor
• plasma facing material
• high heat flux test
• transient ir thermography