Argon frost continuous cryopump for fusion applications

A cryopumping system based on the snail continuous cryopump concept is being developed for fusion applications under a DOE SBIR grant. The primary pump is a liquid helium cooled compound pump designed to continuously pump and fractionate deuterium/tritium and helium. The D/T pumping stage is a 500 mm bore cryocondensation pump with a nominal pumping speed of 45,000 L/s. It will be continuously regenerated by a snail regeneration head every 12 minutes. Continuous regeneration will dramatically reduce the vulnerable tritium inventory in a fusion reactor. Operating at an inlet pressure of 1 millitorr, eight of these pumps could pump the projected D/T flow in the ITER CDA design while reducing the inventory of tritium in the pumping system from 630 to 43 grams. The helium fraction will be pumped in a compound argon frost stage. This stage will also operate continuously with a snail regeneration head. In addition the argon spray head will be enclosed inside the snail, thereby removing gaseous argon from the process chamber. Since the cryocondensation stage will intercept over 90% of the D/T/H stream, a purified stream from this stage could be directly reinjected into the plasma as gas or pellets, thereby bypassing the isotope separation system and further simplifying the fuel cycle. Experiments were undertaken in Phase I which demonstrated continuous cryosorption pumping of hydrogen on CO₂ and argon frosts. The pumping system and its relevance to fusion reactor pumping will be discussed