240 Journal of Nuclear Materials 111 & 112 (1982) 240-242

North-Holland Publishing Company

INFLUENCE OF A HEAT FLUX ON THE HYDROGEN RECYCLING FROM THE

TOKAMAK WALLS

P. WIENHOLD, F. WAELBROECK and J. WINTER

Institut fiir Plasmaphysik der Kernforschungsaniage Jiilich GmbH, Association EURATOM/KFA, Postfach 1913, 5170 Jiilich.
Fed. Rep. Germany

1. Introduction (normal) beam box. Part of this thermal power goes to

the limiters. If one neglects the thermal load by radia-
The first wall of a tokamak device is exposed during tion and takes only into account the wall area near the
operation to large flux densities of atomic hydrogen and limiters which will be mainly influenced by the particle
of escaping atomic ions which stick onto the wall with a bombardment, the following stepwise increase of the
large probability or penetrate into the metal. Once in thermal load seems to be reasonable:
the lattice, the hydrogen diffuses either inwards or back
Time (s) O-5 5-O lo-15 15-20
to the inner surface where it is released in the form of
Power density
molecules. The hydrogen recycling rate increases with
(W cme2) 10 25 50 0
time and reaches approximately the incoming rate [l]
when the wall temperature is constant. This is more or For a first estimation the particle flux penetrating into
less the case during the ohmic heating phase of the the wall has been kept constant at the value acp= lOI
discharge. atoms cmm2 s-i during the discharge.
The application of additional heating pulses - e.g.
The following preliminary values have been used as
during the injection phase of neutral particles - leads to
material constants for the wall (thickness x0 = 2 cm) *:
an excursion of the surface temperature. Since the wall
is already soaked with hydrogen, the release rate in- Hydrogen diffusity
creases rapidly. The recycling coefficient can reach a
D = 1.8 X lo-* exp( - 12200/RT) cm2 SC’,
value which is larger than unity. This outgassing could
drive the density above its critical value. Release rate constant:
Some examples have already been calculated for JET
ok, = 4.4 X lo-l9 exp( -9200/RT) molecules. atomsC’
using the computer code PERI [2]. This code has been
cm4 SC’,
extended to include the effects of the time dependent
wall temperature profile which result from the heat load Inconel heat conductivity K=0.15 W cm -’ K-‘,
[3]. The main constituent of the JET wall is Inconel 625.
Specific heat: c, = 0.5 W s gg’ Km ‘.
The influence of the following parameters were ex-
amined: thermal power density, its time of application
and the initial wall temperature.
3. Results and discussion

3.1. Heat and particle diffusion

2. The calculated JET scenarios [4]

Because of the thermal load the temperature T is a

For the JET l-phase, discharges of 20 s duration are
foreseen separated by pauses of 600s. After an initial
discharge phase of 5 s with ohmic heating (2 MW) only,
the heating power will be increased during an additional
5 s to 5 MW by the injection of neutral particles from a
tangential beam box. The injection power will then be
raised to 10 MW for a further 5 s by activating a second
function of space and time. During the heating phase
the heat wave just reaches the outer wall boundary. This
* More recent measurements have yielded a higher activation
energy for k, (12300 cal mol- ‘) [5]. Using this value, the
outgassing peaks which appear on fig. 2 would be a little
more pronounced.

0022-3 115/82/0000-0000/$02.75 0 1982 North-Holland

 P. Wienhold et al. / Influence of a heat flwr on hydrogen recycling 241

-I
is illustrated by fig. la for a case where the wall temper-
ature is initially homogeneous at Ti = 150°C. The tem-
perature increases are AT, = 21O’C at the inside of the
wall and only 5°C outside. The same is true for the
other two calculated examples with initial wall tempera-
tures of Ti = 50 and 35O’C since the Inconel constants
have been taken as temperature independent (61.
As can be seen from fig. 1b, the hydrogen has
diffused at most some hundreds of pm into the wall at
c(x) the end of the pause. Since this diffusion is unaffected
by the slight temperature increase at the outer boundary
hi31
of the wall, this temperature has been held at the initial
values T, during the whole period of discharge and
t
I15X10’* pause. This simulates an active outer cooling of the wall.

3.2. Hydrogen recycling from the wali

0 01 1
xicml-
12 Obl

-x[cm
0
-1
02
1
The fig. 2 shows the evolution of the hydrogen flux
density u, (counted in atoms cm-* s-‘, left scale) which
is released back into the plasma during the discharge.
The thermal load to the wall has been varied stepwise as
indicated in section 2. In the release rate u, = 2ok,ci [7]
both the subsurfae concentration cs and the release rate
Fig. 1. a, calculated evolution of the temperature distribution
constant ak, change with time according to the temper-
T(x) within the wall (initial temperature Ti = 1SO’C). The
dashed lines represent the distribution 0.05 and 0.55 s after the ature. The evolution of the inner wall temperature is
increase of the thermal load. b, calculated concentration distri- given as AT, in the lower part of fig. 2 (right scale). The
bution c(x) within the wall after 620 s (20 s discharge+600 s horizontal line indicates when T, reaches 200°C.
pause: initial temperature T, = ISO’C). The temperature increases by the comparatively small

alp ~10’60tomslcm2s
ld6x10

08
P
\1: 07
[%I06
25Wlcm’ 50W/cm’

20 tls] - 25 30 35
Fig. 2. Calculated evolution of the hydrogen release rate o, (left scale) and of the increase of the inner wall temperature AT, (right
scale) during the heating phases of the wall and thereafter. The dashed lines correspond to the release rates calculated without
temperature excursion during the discharge. The line at lOI cm-* s-’ Indicates the limit at which the recycling coefficient ([8], eq.
(1)) equals one.
242 P. W&hold et al. / Influence of I? heat flux on h_ydrogen recycling
value of 33°C during the first 5 s (ohmic phase) of the
discharge. The release rates (solid lines) differ only
slightly from the values evaluated when the initial ho-
mogeneous temperature r, had been held constant
(dashed lines). Three examples are given: r, = 50°C
(triangles and stars respectively), r, = 150°C (open
circles and lying crosses) and T, = 350°C (squares and
upright crosses). After 5 s, the recycling reaches roughly
90% of the flux density a’p= lOI atoms cm-’ s-’
which penetrate into the wall (upper line). The lowering
of the u,(t) curves with increasing wall temperature is a
consequence of the choice of the activation energies of
D and k, made here. Had the value for k, been larger
than for D, the order of the curves would have been
reversed ([8], eq. (9)).
At the end of the ohmic heating phase a large
amount of hydrogen is already dissolved in the wall. Its
concentration in the subsurface layer is almost equal to
the saturation value c$ = (acp/2r~k,)‘/~ [8,9]. After the
start of neutral injection, the surface temperature rises
faster. This increases k, and decreases co*. During the
second heating pulse, the subsurface layers even become
oversaturated. A back diffusion of hydrogen from the
bulk to the surface sets in leading to a recycling coeffi-
cient which is larger than unity. Shortly after the begin-
ning of each new heating pulse, diffusion tends to
re-establish the near surface concentration gradient. The
recycling coefficient decreases accordingly.
The effect is especially pronounced at lower wall
temperatures (e.g. SO”). The subsurface concentraton
higher and distributed in a narrower domain. The ex-
ponential character of the k, increase is more pro-
nounced. The backflow of gas into the plasma exceeds
the influx into the wall for more than half a second.
A stepwise increase of the heating power decreases
the amplitude of the individual u, peaks, and might
thereby avoid the occurrence of a recycling coefficient
which is larger than unity. In any case, operation with a
not too low initial wall temperature is advantageous.
The shut down of the heating system causes the
opposite effect: u, drops at first and then increases
slowly as expected. After the discharge, the release rate
falls down below 0.1% of the maximum value. This is
partly due to the decrease of the surface temperature
down to its initial value. Nevertheless, after the first
pause the wall still contains hydrogen (see fig. lb). so
that the calculated recycling rate increases from shot to
shot.
As long as the tokamak operates well below the
critical density limit, values of the recycling coefficient
which increase somewhat above unity are probably not
too critical. But if operation close to the density limit is
aimed at - remembering that neutral injection unavoi-
dably feeds particles in - a careful programming of the
gas inlet will be essential.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank MS P. Borner for
doing the computer runs.
References
ItI F. Waelbroeck, J. Winter and P. Wienhold, Sec. Top.
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is
[31 P. Wienhold. M. Profant, F. Waelbroeck and J. Winter, to
be published.
[41 C. Schtiller, JET, private communication (February 1982).
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[61 Werkstoffbhitter, Thyssen Edelstahlwerke (September 1980).
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