Plasma current sustainment after iron core saturation in the STOR-M tokamak
Plasma current sustainment after iron core saturation in the STOR-M tokamak
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STOR-M 托卡马克铁芯饱和后的等离子体电流维持
DOI：
10.1016/j.fusengdes.2014.02.017
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发表时间：
2014
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
C. Xiao and A. Hirose
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
O. Mitarai; Y. Ding; M. Hubeny; Y. Lu; T. Onchi; D. McColl;C. Xiao and A. Hirose
我们提出在无中心螺线管(CS)的球形托卡马克(ST)反应堆中使用小型铁芯变压器来启动等离子体电流。利用STOR-M铁核托卡马克的高纵横比特性，我们证明了在没有CS的情况下，使用外欧姆加热(OH)线圈可以启动高达10-15kA的等离子体电流，并且在铁芯饱和阶段可以通过增加外OH线圈电流来进一步保持等离子体电流。当磁化电流达到1.2kA，铁芯饱和时，连接到外部OH线圈的第三个电容器组被放电，以保持等离子体电流。等离子体电流略有增加，并如数值计算所预期的那样保持了额外的5毫秒。在磁滞曲线上可以清楚地观察到岩心饱和度。这是首次对无CS的铁芯到空芯变压器相缓慢过渡的可行性进行了实验论证。结果表明，在未来没有CS的STS中，等离子体电流可以由一个小的铁核引发，并在铁核饱和后通过附加加热和垂直场的作用而增大。
We propose to use of a small iron core transformer to start up the plasma current in a spherical tokamak (ST) reactor without central solenoid (CS). Taking advantage of the high aspect ratio of the STOR-M iron core tokamak, we have demonstrated that the plasma current up to 10–15 kA can be started up using the outer Ohmic heating (OH) coils without CS, and that the plasma current can be maintained further by increasing the outer OH coil current during iron core saturation phase. When the magnetizing current reaches 1.2 kA and the iron core becomes saturated, the third capacitor bank connected to the outer OH coils is discharged to maintain the plasma current. The plasma current is slightly increased and maintained for additional 5 ms as expected from numerical calculations. Core saturation has been clearly observed on the hysteresis curve. This is the first experimental demonstration of the feasibility of slow transition from the iron core to air core transformer phase without CS. The results implies that a plasma current can be initiated by a small iron core and could be ramped up by additional heating and vertical field after iron core saturation in future STs without CS.