25 research outputs found

    A strategy to identify breakdown location in MITICA test facility: results of high voltage test campaign

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    The Acceleration Grid Power Supply of the MITICA test facility in Padova (Italy) is currently under commissioning. The power conversion system, the DC generator, and the High Voltage equipment have been individually commissioned, whereas the integration tests are ongoing. It is a challenging process due to the unconventional application, to the variety of different electrical technologies involved and to the complexity of the interfaces. During the integrated tests of the power supplies the achievement of 700kV stable operation has been demonstrated for the first time in a Neutral Beam Injector, but an unexpected event occurred, most likely a breakdown in the HV part, which resulted in a fault of the DC generator. A subsequent test using an auxiliary power supply was performed to check the voltage withstanding capability of the HV plant, but another breakdown occurred at around 1MV. This paper describes the activity performed to identify the location of the breakdowns affecting the integrated tests. A test campaign has been devised with increased diagnostic capabilities and specific strategy conceived to trigger intentional breakdowns in specific locations and collect measurement patterns for different cases. The results of the campaign will be presented and the current understanding of the issue will be described, with a view on future tests and further improvements of diagnostics

    Partial Discharges detection in 1 MV power supplies in MITICA experiment, the ITER Heating Neutral Beam Injector prototype

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    MITICA (Megavolt ITER Injector & Concept Advancement), the full scale prototype of ITER Heating Neutral Beam, is under realization at the Neutral Beam Test Facility (Padova, Italy). It is designed to deliver 16.5 MW to ITER plasma, obtained by accelerating negative Deuterium ions up to 1 MeV for a total ion current of 40 A and then neutralized. MITICA Acceleration Power Supply is composed of several non-standard equipment, beyond industrial standard for insulation voltage level (-1 MVdc) and dimensions. Voltage withstand tests (up to 1.265 MVdc) have been performed in five subsequent steps (from 2018 to 2019), according to the installation progress, after connecting equipment belonging to different procurements. During integrated commissioning, started in 2021, two breakdowns occurred in a position of the HV plant not still identified, so they could be occurred either in air or in SF6. To identify the locations of possible weak insulation points, the existing diagnostics for partial discharge detection (the precursor of breakdowns) as a first step have been improved on air-insulated parts by consisting in a set of instrumentation, like capacitive probes and off-the-shelf instruments for AC application (acoustic and electromagnetic sensors). The paper deals with the instruments qualification to assess their suitability for DC usage and then with the investigation performed in MITICA, in particular: 1) sensitivity assessment campaign, with artificially produced corona effect to identify the minimum threshold of each diagnostics 2) voltage application to MITICA plant, moving the instrumentation around equipment and increasing progressively the voltage looking for corona phenomena to identify possible weak insulation points.Comment: Nine pages, twelve figures, accepted manuscript of a paper published in Fusion Engineering and Desig

    Overview on electrical issues faced during the SPIDER experimental campaigns

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    SPIDER is the full-scale prototype of the ion source of the ITER Heating Neutral Beam Injector, where negative ions of Hydrogen or Deuterium are produced by a RF generated plasma and accelerated with a set of grids up to ~100 keV. The Power Supply System is composed of high voltage dc power supplies capable of handling frequent grid breakdowns, high current dc generators for the magnetic filter field and RF generators for the plasma generation. During the first 3 years of SPIDER operation different electrical issues were discovered, understood and addressed thanks to deep analyses of the experimental results supported by modelling activities. The paper gives an overview on the observed phenomena and relevant analyses to understand them, on the effectiveness of the short-term modifications provided to SPIDER to face the encountered issues and on the design principle of long-term solutions to be introduced during the currently ongoing long shutdown.Comment: 8 pages, 12 figures. Presented at SOFT 202

    The Full-Size Source and Injector Prototypes for ITER Neutral Beams

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    The development of the NBI systems for ITER requires unprecedented parameters (40A of negative ion current accelerated up to 1MV for one hour) so that a test facility is in the final phase of construction at Consorzio RFX (Padova, Italy), housing two experiments. A full-size negative ion source, SPIDER, aims at demonstrating the creation and extraction of a D-/H- current up to 50/60A on a wide surface (more than 1m2) with uniformity within 10 %. The second experimental device is the prototype of the whole ITER injector, MITICA, aiming to develop the knowledge and the technologies to guarantee the successful operation of the two injectors to be installed in ITER, including the capability of 1MV voltage holding at low pressure. The key component of the system is the beam source, whose design results from a trade-off between requirements of the optics and real grids with finite thickness and thermo-mechanical constraints due to the cooling needs and the presence of permanent magnets. Numerical simulations are a necessary supplement to the experimental effort to optimise the accelerator optics and to estimate heat loads and currents on the various surfaces. In this paper the main requirements for ITER NBI will be discussed. The design and the status of the main components and systems will be described. Particularly a review of the accelerator physics and a comparison between the designs of the SPIDER and MITICA accelerators are presented. Complex network theory will be applied to the NBI system in order to identify the hidden functional relationships and the most important parameters for the operation. \ua9 2016 The Japan Society of Plasma

    The DTT device: Power supplies and electrical distribution system

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    Abstract This paper presents the design criteria and the preliminary characteristics of the power supply and electrical systems of the Divertor Tokamak Test (DTT) facility. The power supply system has to feed: 6 superconducting modules of the central solenoid, 6 poloidal field superconducting coils, 18 toroidal field superconducting coils designed for a current up to 50 kA, some coils for plasma fast control and vertical stabilization, the electron (ECRH) and ion (ICRH) cyclotron additional heating systems designed to deliver about 25 MW to the plasma, further 20 MW to the plasma generated by a neutral beam injector (NBI) and all the auxiliary systems and services. The analysis was carried out on a reference scenario with a plasma current of 6 MA, mainly to estimate the electrical power needed to operate the facility, but also to identify some design choices and component ratings
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