Speaker
Fernando Roca Urgorri
(National Fusion Laboratory)
Description
The Dual Cooled Lithium Lead (DCLL) blanket is one of the four breeder blanket technologies under consideration within the framework of EUROfusion Consortium activities. The aim of this work is to develop a preliminary model that can track the tritium concentration along each part of the DCLL blanket and their ancillary systems at any time.
Because of tritium’s nature, the phenomena of diffusion, dissociation, recombination and solubilisation have been carefully taken into account when describing the tritium behaviour inside the lead-lithium channels, the structural materials, the flow channel inserts and the helium channels. The simulations have been performed using the object oriented modelling software EcosimPro.
Results have been obtained for a pulsed generation scenario for DEMO. The tritium inventory, the permeation rates and the amount of tritium extracted from the lead-lithium loop have been computed.
The DCLL concept is characterised by the high velocity of the lead-lithium which cause heavy MHD effects. Because of that, the simulations include the presence of MHD boundary layers that favours the permeation along the toroidal direction over the permeation along the radial direction. Another feature of the DCLL concept is the flow channel insert. The model shows that the alumina presented in the inserts acts as a very efficient coating. As a consequence, the small gaps filled with lead-lithium flowing at low velocities become the most relevant source of permeation for this concept.
Besides, a parametric study has been performed. The influence of some key parameters (PbLi mass flow, temperatures, extraction efficiencies…) has been studied independently from each other in order to analyse their influence over the whole system.
The model provides valuable information for the design of the DCLL blanket. More complex upgrades are planned to be implemented based on this model in future stages of the EUROfusion Project.
Co-authors
Angel Ibarra
(National Fusion Laboratory, CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain)
Carlos Moreno
(National Fusion Laboratory, CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain)
David Rapisarda
(National Fusion Laboratory, CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain)
Elisabetta Carella
(National Fusion Laboratory, CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain)
Fernando Roca Urgorri
(National Fusion Laboratory, CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain)
Ivan Fernandez
(National Fusion Laboratory, CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain)
Jesus Castellanos
(National Fusion Laboratory, CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain)
