29th Symposium on Fusion Technology (SOFT 2016)

P1.169 The current status and challenges of the PbLi cold trap development undertaken at CVR

5 Sep 2016, 14:20

1h 40m

Foyer 2A (2nd floor), 3A (3rd floor) (Prague Congress Centre)

Board: 169

Poster H. Fuel Cycle and Breeding Blankets P1 Poster session

Speaker

Otakar Frybort (Technical calculations department)

Description

Research Centre Rez (CVR) is actively involved in research and development of a purification technique of the liquid lithium-lead eutectic alloy based on use of a cold trap. The first activities linked to this field are dated since 2003. They are carried out within the major European fusion projects (F4E, EFDA and EUROfusion) and the Czech national CANUT project. For the cold trap development, the MELILOO experimental PbLi loop is used. The presentation will describe evolution of the cold trap design covering all the concepts studied and experimentally tested in the past as well as the ones which are currently being developed in CVR and will be commissioned in the near future. Covered are also technical issues which have been met and solved during the process of the cold trap development. A significant part of the article deals with description of the latest air cooled cold trap concept. Detailed description of the design, operational experience and basic results of the engineering analyses with focus on the thermal-hydraulic studies are included.  A series of simulations to evaluate velocity and temperature field of the PbLi liquid metal inside the cold trap was performed for different operational conditions using CFD approach. The results of these studies were subsequently compared with the experimental data and the suitability of the used computational code was evaluated. Based on the results of the engineering analyses and operational experience, steps leading to improvement of efficiency and reliability of the device were proposed and are discussed in the paper.