Design and Construction of the NSTX Bakeout, Cooling and Vacuum Systems
L.E. Dudek, W. Blanchard, M. Kalish, R. Gernhardt, and R.F. Parsells
Date of PPPL Report: November 1999
Presented at: The 18th IEEE/NPSS (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers/Nuclear and Plasma Science Society) Symposium on Fusion Engineering (SOFE) which was held in Albuquerque, NM,on October 25-29, 1999.
This paper will describe the design, construction and initial operation of the NSTX bakeout, water cooling and vacuum systems. The bakeout system is designed for two modes of operation. The first mode allows heating of the first wall components to 350 °C while the external vessel is cooled to 150 °C. The second mode cools the first wall to 150 °C and the external vessel to 50 °C. The system uses a low viscosity heat transfer oil which is capable of high temperature low pressure operation. The NSTX Torus Vacuum Pumping System (TVPS) is designed to achieve a base pressure of approximately 1x10 -8 Torr and to evacuate the plasma fuel gas loads in less than 5 minutes between discharges. The vacuum pumping system is capable of a pumping speed of approximately 3400 l/s for deuterium. The hardware consists of two turbo molecular pumps (TMPs) and a mechanical pump set consisting of a mechanical and a Roots blower pump. A PLC is used as the control system to provide remote monitoring, control and software interlock capability. The NSTX cooling water provides chilled, de ionized water for heat removal in the TF, OH and PF, power supplies, bus bar systems, and various diagnostics. The system provides flow monitoring via a PLC to prevent damage due to loss of flow.