Nuclear Materials and Energy (Mar 2023)
The first achievement of the double feedback control of the detachment in the long-pulse plasma on EAST
Abstract
EAST implements the double feedback control experiments of the detachment by using two control systems at the same time to explore the new detachment control way. We hire two PID controllers and two gas puffing valves dividedly to inject impurity gases from different locations, increasing the radiated power of the bulk plasma and reducing the divertor electron temperature (Te,t) simultaneously. This control method is applied in the EAST long-pulse H-mode plasma, the controlled variables of the radiative feedback control is the local radiative intensity and the total radiated power respectively. In the experiments, the longest double control duration has been up to 13.5 s, the divertor heat flux is reduced significantly in the control duration, while the particle flux has an overall drop at the end of the control phase. The chosen impurity species in the control system are Neon (Ne) and Argon (Ar): Ne is injected from the upper divertor to raise the core radiated power, and the Ar is injected from the lower divertor to reduce the Te,t beneath 8 eV. However, the Ar injection is not only decreasing the Te,t, but also generates an unfavorable increment of the core radiated power. This increment makes the bulk radiated power is higher than the target value, the radiative feedback control thus is paused for a long time. This mechanism results in the double feedback control back to the sequential implementations of the two feedback controls, which does not accord with the original expection(the both controls run at the same time), and degrades the control precision. In the future, many mitigating ways will be tested to improve the control effect. We will also develop a dynamic response model of the impurity seeding to simulate the time evolution of the divertor heat load with two kinds of impurities. The modeling results will be used to optimize the double feedback control system to gain a better experimental results.
