Technology and engineering of liquid lithium for fusion applications
type: CreativeWork
description: Many outstanding issues in tokamak fusion arise from the interaction of the fusion plasma with the first wall of the device, particularly in the divertor of the tokamak. Edge cooling, impurity generation, and first wall erosion among others all have root causes that lie in particle and energy exchanges that occur at the plasma boundary. Solid divertors, currently made mainly out of carbon, beryllium, or tungsten, can be strongly eroded by the edge plasma and appear as impurities in the plasma, leading to higher radiative losses. Solid divertors also tend to engender high edge recycling regimes, leading to edges that are much cooler than the core. Liquid lithium has been proposed, tested, and, on small scales, proven to be a potential replacement for current divertor concepts. Liquid lithium surfaces give rise to low recycling regimes at the plasma edge, increasing energy confinement times, encouraging quiescent H-Mode plasmas, and lowering radiative losses from the core. Current schemes for introducing lithium into a fusion device consist of lithium evaporators. However, as fusion devices evolve from pulsed to steady state, new methods will need to be employed such as the Lithium-Metal Infused Trenches (LIMIT) concept of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), or thin flowing film lithium walls. Critical to the implementation of these devices is understanding the interactions of liquid lithium with various surfaces. Presented here are experiments investigating the material compatibility, wetting characteristics, and relative thermopower of liquid lithium with a variety of potential substrate candidates for the LiMIT concept. Experiments on the wetting characteristics of the lithium used the contact angle as a metric. Among those materials investigated are 316 stainless steel, molybdenum, tantalum, and tungsten. The contact angle, as well as its dependence on temperature was measured. For example, at 200 C, tungsten registers a contact angle of 130o, w…
abstract: Many outstanding issues in tokamak fusion arise from the interaction of the fusion plasma with the first wall of the device, particularly in the divertor of the tokamak. Edge cooling, impurity generation, and first wall erosion among others all have root causes that lie in particle and energy exchanges that occur at the plasma boundary. Solid divertors, currently made mainly out of carbon, beryllium, or tungsten, can be strongly eroded by the edge plasma and appear as impurities in the plasma, leading to higher radiative losses. Solid divertors also tend to engender high edge recycling regimes, leading to edges that are much cooler than the core. Liquid lithium has been proposed, tested, and, on small scales, proven to be a potential replacement for current divertor concepts. Liquid lithium surfaces give rise to low recycling regimes at the plasma edge, increasing energy confinement times, encouraging quiescent H-Mode plasmas, and lowering radiative losses from the core. Current schemes for introducing lithium into a fusion device consist of lithium evaporators. However, as fusion devices evolve from pulsed to steady state, new methods will need to be employed such as the Lithium-Metal Infused Trenches (LIMIT) concept of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), or thin flowing film lithium walls. Critical to the implementation of these devices is understanding the interactions of liquid lithium with various surfaces. Presented here are experiments investigating the material compatibility, wetting characteristics, and relative thermopower of liquid lithium with a variety of potential substrate candidates for the LiMIT concept. Experiments on the wetting characteristics of the lithium used the contact angle as a metric. Among those materials investigated are 316 stainless steel, molybdenum, tantalum, and tungsten. The contact angle, as well as its dependence on temperature was measured. For example, at 200 C, tungsten registers a contact angle of 130o, w…
author: Fiflis, Peter
language: en
keywords: Lithium, Fusion, Plasma, Lithium plasma facing components (PFCs), Contact Angle, Seebeck
date published: 2013-08-22T16:35:14Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:25:34Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/45297