Dresden 2014 – scientific programme

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VA: Fachverband Vakuumphysik und Vakuumtechnik

VA 1: Vacuum Generation

VA 1.2: Invited Talk

Monday, March 31, 2014, 10:40–11:20, HSZ 105

Revival of mercury diffusion pumps - A new, compact design for fusion applications — •Thomas Giegerich, Christian Day, Xueli Luo, Ralf Müller, Santiago Ochoa, Matthieu Scannapiego, and Holger Strobel — Institute for Technical Physics (ITEP), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Campus Nord, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, D-76344

The fuel cycle of fusion power plants with several hours long plasma pulses poses a large challenge for the vacuum pumping systems, especially for the primary pumps. Large amounts of radioactive and chemically reactive gases (tritium) must be processed under rough working conditions: The pumps must work under strong magnetic fields, neutronic radiation and in an atmosphere where dust is present. Furthermore, it must be practically maintenance-free and fulfil high safety requirements. As only feasible pumps for this task, diffusion pumps have been identified. Nowadays, diffusion pumps with oil as working fluid are easily available in the required pumping speeds (some 10'000 l/s), but, unfortunately, oil cannot be used for tritium processing as it would decompose. This is why a large diffusion pump with mercury as working fluid is currently under development at KIT. Mercury as perfectly tritium compatible working fluid was already used in the early years of the diffusion pump, which celebrates its 100 birthday next year. This talk presents the latest results of the pump development procedure including the latest simulation results as well as thermal and mechanical analyses of the current pump design.