Test and Commissioning of 82.6 GHz ECRH system on SST-1

• Published in: Journal of physics. Conference series 2005-01, Vol.25 (1), p.96-102
• Main Authors: Bora, D, Sathyanarayana, K, Shukla, B K, Chattopadhyay, Prabal, Srinivas, Y S S, Khilar, P L, Kushwah, Mahesh, Rajnish, Kumar, Sugandhi, Ritesh, Singh, Manoj, Babu, Rajan, P, Jatin, G, Agrajit, Biswas, Prabal, D, Pragnesh, Kadia, B R, V, Chetan, Patel, Harshida, P, Dharmesh, Kirit, P, Parmar, K G, Makwana, A R, Harsha, M, Soni, Jignesh, Yadav, Vipin, Shmelev, M, Belousov, V, Kurbatov, V, Belov, Yu, Tai, E
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bellows; Commissioning; Cyclotron resonance devices; Electron cyclotron resonance; Heating; Loading; Output; Physics; Plasma; Plasma jets; Tokamak devices; Transmission lines; Waveguides
• ISSN: 1742-6596; 1742-6588; 1742-6596
• DOI: 10.1088/1742-6596/25/1/013

Electron Cyclotron Resonance Heating (ECRH) system will play an important role in plasma formation, heating and current drive in the Superconducting Steady state Tokamak (SST-1). Commissioning activity of the machine has been initiated. Many of the sub-systems have been prepared for the first plasma discharge. A radial and a top port have been allotted for low field side (LFS) and high field side (HFS) launch of O and X- modes in the plasma. The system is based on a gyrotron source operating at a frequency of 82.6±0.1GHz (GLGD-82.6/0.2) and capable of delivering 0.2 MW / 1000s with 17% duty cycle. The transmission line consisting of ∼15 meters length 63.5mm corrugated wave guide, DC break, wave guide switch, mitre bend, polariser, bellows that terminates with a vacuum barrier CVD window. A beam launching system used to steer the microwave beam in the plasma volume is connected between the end of the transmission line and the tokamak radial and top ports. A VME based real time data acquisition and control (DAC) system is used for monitoring, acquisition and control. Hard-wired interlock operates a rail-gap based crowbar system in less than 10µs under any fault condition. Burn patterns are recorded at various stages in the transmission line. The gyrotron is tested for ∼200 kW / 1000s operation on a water dummy load. Transmission line is tested at various power levels for long pulse operation. The paper highlights the experimental results of successful commissioning of the system.