Development of wall conditioning and impurity monitoring systems in Versatile Experiment Spherical Torus (VEST)

Abstract

Wall conditioning and impurity monitoring systems are developed in Versatile Experiment Spherical Torus (VEST). As a wall conditioning system, a baking system covering the vacuum vessel wall partially and a glow discharge cleaning (GDC) system using two electrodes with dc and 50kHz power supplies are installed. The GDC system operates with hydrogen and helium gases for both chemical and physical desorption. The impurity monitoring system with residual gas analyzer (RGA), operating at <10−5Torr with a differential pumping system, is installed along with the optical emission spectroscopy (OES) system to monitor the hydrogen and impurity radiation lines. Effects of these wall conditioning techniques are investigated with the impurity monitoring system for ohmic discharges of VEST. The partial baking and He GDC show limited effects on plasma characteristics but sufficient H2 GDC above 4h enables the longer plasma current duration up to ∼15ms within 3h from the end of treatment.