Edge Localized Mode Mitigation Research Articles

Edge localized mode suppression and plasma response using mixed toroidal harmonic resonant magnetic perturbations in DIII-D

Edge localized mode (ELM) suppression has been achieved in the DIII-D tokamak using mixed toroidal and 3 harmonic resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs). Here is the toroidal mode number. It is observed that mixed toroidal harmonic RMPs lower the threshold current for ELM suppression compared to the single case. The decreased threshold suggests that mixed toroidal harmonic RMPs offer a better path to ELM control. The error field effect is studied by superimposing error field correction upon the phase scan, which shows that it is possible to suppress the ELM and correct the error field simultaneously. The plasma response measured by magnetic sensors shows the harmonic plays a key role in ELM suppression using mixed toroidal harmonic RMPs. A nonlinear jump in the plasma response is observed during the bifurcation from mitigation to suppression of ELMs, similar to the results reported in Nazikian et al (2015 Phys. Rev. Lett. 114 5). Magneto-hydrodynamic simulations using toroidal rotation find good agreement with the ELM mitigated phase when the input rotation profile is high and induces strong screening of the RMP. Simulations with zero-crossing rotation find strong penetration of the RMP and reproduce the mode structure of ELM suppression on both the low and high field side. This suggests that edge components may penetrate during the transition from ELM mitigation to suppression.

Study on edge localized mode during plasma vertical swing in HL-2A tokamak

An experiment on edge localized modes (ELMs) during the vertical swing is performed in HL-2A tokamak. ELM mitigation is observed when the plasma moves upward. The plasma column expands accompanied by a decrease in both lower triangularity and the absolute value of local magnetic shear at the outer mid-plane during the upward moving. The critical pressure gradient in pedestal is reduced for the mitigating case according to the linear simulation based on peeling-ballooning theory. The physics of the ELM crash process is also explored through nonlinear simulation. For the mitigating case, small current drive for low-n modes and a weak ion diamagnetic effect on high-n modes lead to a higher dominant mode and a wider growth rate spectrum, which result in weak turbulence transport and a small ELM size.

Development and implementation of Supersonic Molecular Beam Injection for EAST tokamak

As a method for plasma density control, Edge Localized Mode (ELM) mitigation and refueling, a Supersonic Molecular Beam Injection (SMBI) system is successfully developed and implemented for the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). The SMBI is designed to produce a 400–1200 m/s molecular beam of hydrogen/deuterium for injecting into the plasma. An innovative system for measuring the injected particle number is also developed to increase the measuring accuracy of SMBI. In addition, a movable structure of the nozzle is designed to adjust the distance between the nozzle and plasma, in order to improve the fueling efficiency of SMBI by decreasing this separation distance. The successful implementation of SMBI provides an important tool for studying plasma density feedback control and ELM mitigation on the EAST campaign. To the best of our knowledge, the engineering design process of the SMBI system on the EAST has not been reported previously; therefore, the structure, implementation details, and the test results of the SMBI system are presented herein for the first time.

Toroidal plasma response based ELM control coil design for EU DEMO

Magnetic coil design study is carried out, for the purpose of mitigating or suppressing the edge localized modes (ELMs) in a EU DEMO reference scenario. The coil design, including both the coil geometry and the coil current requirement, is based on criteria derived from the linear, full toroidal plasma response computed by the MARS-F code (Liu et al 2000 Phys. Plasma 7 3681). With a single midplane row of coils, a coil size covering about 30°–50° poloidal angle of the torus is found to be optimal for ELM control using the n > 2 resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) field (n is the toroidal mode number). For off-midplane coils, the coils’ poloidal location, as well as the relative toroidal phase (coil phasing) between the upper and lower rows of coils, also sensitively affects the ELM control according to the specified criteria. Assuming that the optimal coil phasing can always be straightforwardly implemented, following a simple analytic model derived from toroidal computations, it is better to place the two off-midplane rows of coils near the midplane, in order to maximize the resonant field amplitude and to have larger effects on ELMs. With the same coil current, the ex-vessel coils can be made as effective as the in-vessel coils, at the expense of increasing the ex-vessel coils’ size. This is however possible only for low-n (n = 1–3) RMP fields. With these low-n fields, and assuming 300 kAt maximal coil current, the computed plasma displacement near the X-point can meet the 10 mm level, which we use as the conservative indicator for achieving ELM mitigation in EU DEMO. The risk of partial control coil failure in EU DEMO is also assessed based on toroidal modeling, indicating that the large n = 1 sideband due to coil failure may need to be corrected, if the nominal n > 1 coil configurations are used for ELM control in EU DEMO.

Effect of ELM pacing on morphology evolution and erosion of tungsten as a plasma-facing material in a fusion environment

Mitigation of transient plasma events in a future fusion device is necessary to minimize thermal damage on surrounding plasma facing components (PFCs). Intense heat loading caused by an edge-localized mode (ELM) can lead to melting and splashing of the PFC surface. ELM mitigation involves triggering these events at higher frequencies, which lowers the effective heat flux imparted on the material. Unfortunately, concurrent, high-flux He+ ion irradiation on tungsten (W), which is the leading candidate material for future PFCs, has been shown to drive the development of an arborescent nanostructure, known as fuzz. Large drops in thermal conductivity and mechanical strength with fuzz formation necessitate a reconsideration of the impact of ELM mitigation on material damage and erosion. Three different types of experiments designed to characterize the synergistic effect between He+ ion irradiation and pulsed heat loading (replicated with a pulsed millisecond laser) were conducted in the UHFI-II facility at CMUXE.W samples exposed to pulsed heat loading underwent roughening in the form of a shale-like surface morphology, regardless of frequency. The addition of simultaneous He+ ion irradiation with pulsed heat loading promoted splashing of molten material and caused significant pore formation. Increasing the frequency to 10 Hz produced a smoother W surface. However, when the total average laser power was held constant, increasing the frequency decreased the laser energy density, which significantly decreased surface melting and enhanced early stage fuzz formation. Results obtained raise an important question of whether ELM mitigation parameters can be tuned to anneal out any He-induced surface structuring without causing unsustainable splashing of molten material.

A Quasi-Periodic Linear Feeder for the Impurity Granular Injection on DIII-D

Injection of solid nonfuel pellets has been actively used as a tool for pacing and mitigation of edge localized modes (ELMs). In DIII-D, effective ELM pacing has been demonstrated by the high-frequency injection of lithium and carbon submillimeter spheres, using the impurity granule injector (IGI). This device injects granules into the plasma at speeds up to 150 m/s, through impact with a rotating impeller. In the IGI, high-frequency granule delivery was accomplished through a vibrational granule dropper, in which high time-average rates are obtained at the cost of lack of period control. We present a new in-line granule feeder, capable of delivering granules of size 0.2–2 mm with no restriction of material properties, at quasi-periodic rates of up to 150 Hz, for 0.7-mm diameter lithium granules (600 Hz using 0.3-mm granules). The new dropper mechanism combines two piezo-in-line units; one which feeds the impeller and one which circulates granules that are filtered out of the feeder path. A remotely adjustable filter eliminates granules that are stacked, oversized, or side by side allowing the formation of a single moving granule injection line. The granules fall off the in-line feeder exit one at a time, achieving a quasi-periodic delivery rate proportional to the exit speed. At higher rates, the periodicity deteriorates. This behavior was studied using high-speed cameras and electrostatic measurements, and it was found that at drop rates <60 Hz, the granule delivery period has a variation of ±25% which appears to be caused by gaps which develop in the last centimeter of the injection line, as granules exit off the moving track. The linear feeder concept is robust against bridge instabilities and clogging issues, thanks to the simple diverter filter and constant recirculation of granules. Furthermore, the open-top design of the device facilitates refilling the device from separate reservoirs and has easy access for directly monitoring operation and adjustment. This paper describes the details of the in-line feeder design, along with several design iterations. The goal is a robust in-vacuum mechanism that can deliver granule flow ranging from a single particle to a line of particles at 150 per second, using different sizes and materials from the same apparatus.

Measurement of velocity and reliability of 50 Hz pellet injector for EAST

Cryogenic deuterium pellet injection is one of important techniques for edge localized mode (ELM) mitigation for successful operation of ITER in the future. A high frequency, 50 Hz, pellet injection system (PI-50) based on screw extrusion forming ice and pneumatic acceleration has been built and developed for ELM mitigation for EAST. As velocity and reliability of launching frozen pellet are of importance to ELM mitigation, a diagnostic system including video cameras is installed on this pellet injection system to acquire the pellet's velocity and monitor the quality of pellet. With the help of this diagnostic system, the velocity and reliability of PI-50 system have been measured successfully. The reliability of PI-50 is more than 85% when the launching frequency is 50 Hz, which means this system can be used for ELM mitigation on EAST in the future. PI-50 system has been installed on EAST at present and is expected to be involved physics experiment in next campaign on EAST.

Control of edge localized modes by pedestal deposited impurity in the HL-2A tokamak

Effect of the pedestal deposited impurity on the edge-localized mode (ELM) behaviour has been observed and intensively investigated in the HL-2A tokamak. Impurities have been externally seeded by a newly developed laser blow-off (LBO) system. Both mitigation and suppression of ELMs have been realized by LBO-seeded impurity. Measurements have shown that the LBO-seeded impurity particles are mainly deposited in the pedestal region. During the ELM mitigation phase, the pedestal density fluctuation is significantly increased, indicating that the ELM mitigation may be achieved by the enhancement of the pedestal transport. The transition from ELM mitigation to ELM suppression was triggered when the number of the LBO-seeded impurity exceeds a threshold value. During the ELM suppression phase, a harmonic coherent mode (HCM) is excited by the LBO-seeded impurity, and the pedestal density fluctuation is significantly decreased, the electron density is continuously increased, implying that HCM may reduce the pedestal turbulence, suppress ELMs, increase the pedestal pressure, thus extending the Peeling–Ballooning instability limit. It has been found that the occurance of the ELM mitigation and ELM suppression closely depends on the LBO laser spot diameter.

Pellet-Injector Technology—Brief History and Key Developments in the Last 25 Years

High-speed injection of solid fuel was first proposed in 1954 as a possible solution to the problem of transporting fresh fuel across the confining magnetic fields into the plasma of a fusion reactor. While it took a few decades, the use of cryogenic pellets (typically H2 and D2) on fusion experiments became common place; most tokamaks and stellarators are now equipped with a pellet injector(s). These devices operate at low temperatures (~10 to 20 K) and most often use a simple light gas gun to accelerate macroscopic-size pellets (~0.4- to 6-mm diameter) to speeds of ~100 to 1000 m/s. Before the advantages of pellet injection from the magnetic high-field side (HFS) of a tokamak were recognized in 1997, development focused on increasing the pellet speed to achieve deeper plasma penetration and higher fueling efficiency. The HFS injection technique typically dictates slower pellets (~100 to 300 m/s) to survive transport through the curved guide tubes that route the pellets to the plasma from the inside wall of the device. Two other key operating parameters for plasma fueling are the pellet-injection repetition rate and time duration—a single pellet is adequate for some experiments and a steady-state injection rate of up to ~50 Hz is appropriate for others. In addition to plasma fueling, cryogenic pellets have often been used for particle transport and impurity studies in fusion experiments (most often with neon pellets). During the past two decades, a few new applications for cryogenic pellets have been developed and used successfully in plasma experiments: (1) one for edge-localized mode mitigation, (2) one for plasma disruption mitigation (requires large pellets that are shattered before injection into the plasma), and (3) another in which pure argon pellets are used to trigger runaway electrons in the plasma for scientific studies. In this paper, a brief history and the key developments in this technology during the past 25 years are presented and discussed.

Power Modulation System and Experiments of Lower Hybrid Wave on EAST

To satisfy various requirements of different physics experiments, a new power modulation method of the lower hybrid wave (LHW) has been developed in Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), including the development of a control source combining software and hardware. Such modulation system is realized by the main positive-intrinsic-negative diode switch located at the oscillator. The LHW modulation system has been installed and tested, demonstrating that the modulation parameters can be controlled flexibly. The maximal modulation frequency is about 10 kHz, which is limited by the hardware circuit speed. The system has been successfully used to study the influence of LHW on the performances of plasma. Under the modulation of LHW, strong mitigation of edge-localized modes (ELMs) has been observed, and ELM pace-making technique has been demonstrated. Further experimental studies with the modulation system will be continued in EAST.

Effect of lower hybrid current drive on pedestal instabilities in the HL-2A tokamak

Edge localized mode (ELM) mitigation with lower hybrid current drive (LHCD) has been observed in the HL-2A tokamak. This mitigation effect is very sensitive to the parameters as the plasma density and the LHCD absorbed power, i.e., more easily to be observed for high density and large LHCD absorbed power. The divertor peak heat load released by ELM has been significantly reduced during the mitigation phase. The pedestal density gradient is slightly reduced during ELM mitigation, and the plasma rotation velocity and ion temperature are significantly reduced by LHCD. It has been found that the ELM mitigation is not synchronized with the LHCD, while it is synchronized with the increase of the pedestal turbulence, showing that the enhancement of the transport due to the pedestal turbulence can be the direct cause of the ELM mitigation.

Enhanced toroidal flow stabilization of edge localized modes with increased plasma density

Toroidal flow alone is generally thought to have an important influence on tokamak edge pedestal stability, even though theoretical analysis often predicts merely a weak stabilizing effect of toroidal flow on the edge localized modes (ELMs) in experimental parameter regimes. For the first time, we find from two-fluid MHD calculations that such a stabilization, however, can be significantly enhanced by increasing the edge plasma density. Our finding resolves a long-standing mystery whether or how toroidal rotation can indeed have an effective influence on ELMs, and explains why the ELM mitigation and suppression by toroidal rotation are more favorably achieved in higher collisionality regime in recent experiments. The finding suggests a new control scheme on modulating toroidal flow stabilization of ELMs with plasma density, along with a new additional constraint on the optimal level of plasma density for the desired edge plasma conditions.

Field-Line Localized Destabilization of Ballooning Modes in Three-Dimensional Tokamaks.

Field-line localized ballooning modes have been observed at the edge of high confinement mode plasmas in ASDEX Upgrade with rotating 3D perturbations induced by an externally applied n=2 error field and during a moderate level of edge localized mode mitigation. The observed ballooning modes are localized to the field lines which experience one of the two zero crossings of the radial flux surface displacement during one rotation period. The localization of the ballooning modes agrees very well with the localization of the largest growth rates from infinite-n ideal ballooning stability calculations using a realistic 3D ideal magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium. This analysis predicts a lower stability with respect to the axisymmetric case. The primary mechanism for the local lower stability is the 3D distortion of the local magnetic shear.

H-mode achievement and edge features in RFX-mod tokamak operation

The RFX-mod experiment is a fusion device designed to operate as a reversed field pinch (RFP), with a major radius m and a minor radius m. Its high versatility recently allowed operating it also as an ohmic tokamak, allowing comparative studies between the two configurations in the same device. The device is equipped with a state of the art MHD mode feedback control system providing a magnetic boundary effective control, by applying resonant or non-resonant magnetic perturbations (MP), both in RFP and in tokamak configurations. In the fusion community the application of MPs is widely studied as a promising tool to limit the impact of plasma filaments and ELMs (edge localized modes) on plasma facing components. An important new research line is the exploitation of the RFX-mod active control system for ELM mitigation studies. As a first step in this direction, this paper presents the most recent achievements in term of RFX-mod tokamak explored scenarios, which allowed the first investigation of the ohmic and edge biasing induced H-mode. The production of D-shaped tokamak discharges and the design and deployment of an insertable polarized electrode were accomplished. Reproducible H-mode phases were obtained with insertable electrode negative biasing in single null discharges, representing an unexplored scenario with this technique. Important modifications of the edge plasma density and flow properties are observed. During the achieved H-mode ELM-like electromagnetic composite filamentary structures are observed. They are characterized by clear vorticity and parallel current density patterns.

Pellet injectors for EAST and KSTAR tokamaks

The paper presents high frequency pellet injectors developed for edge localized mode mitigation and plasma fuelling of the EAST and KSTAR tokamaks. Each pellet injector is able to inject solid deuterium or hydrogen pellets at steady state mode. Injectors consist of modules including screw extruder cooled by liquid helium and pneumatic punchers for pellet fabrication and acceleration which are optimized to reach maximal injection frequency for specified pellet parameters.The EAST pellet injector is capable of injecting 1.5mm diameter and 1.2–1.8mm length pellets at frequency up to 50Hz with velocities 200–250m/s using two injection modules working in an alternating mode at 25Hz each. Injection reliability over 90% has been confirmed during several cycles of continuous D2 pellet injection at 50Hz. The KSTAR pellet injector has been designed to inject 2mm size pellets at frequency up to 20Hz and velocity 200m/s. Due to improved design of pellet fabrication and acceleration system the world record in continuous injection of 20,164 deuterium pellets (Ø2.0×1.5mm) for 1039s at 20Hz with reliability 97% has been achieved.

Mitigation of divertor heat flux by high-frequency ELM pacing with non-fuel pellet injection in DIII-D

Experiments have been conducted on DIII-D investigating high repetition rate injection of non-fuel pellets as a tool for pacing Edge Localized Modes (ELMs) and mitigating their transient divertor heat loads. Effective ELM pacing was obtained with injection of Li granules in different H-mode scenarios, at frequencies 3–5 times larger than the natural ELM frequency, with subsequent reduction of strike-point heat flux (Bortolon et al., Nucl. Fus., 56, 056008, 2016). However, in scenarios with high pedestal density (∼6 ×1019m−3), the magnitude of granule triggered ELMs shows a broad distribution, in terms of stored energy loss and peak heat flux, challenging the effectiveness of ELM mitigation. Furthermore, transient heat-flux deposition correlated with granule injections was observed far from the strike-points. Field line tracing suggest this phenomenon to be consistent with particle loss into the mid-plane far scrape-off layer, at toroidal location of the granule injection.

Comparative investigation of ELM control based on toroidal modelling of plasma response to RMP fields

Extensive modelling efforts of the plasma response to the resonant magnetic perturbation fields, utilized for controlling the edge localized mode (ELM), help to identify the edge-peeling response as a key factor, which correlates to the observed ELM mitigation in several tokamak devices, including MAST, ASDEX Upgrade, EAST, and HL-2A. The recently observed edge safety factor window for ELM mitigation in HL-2A experiments is explained in terms of the edge-peeling response. The computed plasma response, based on toroidal single fluid resistive plasma model with different assumption of toroidal flows, is found generally larger in ELM suppressed cases as compared to that of the ELM mitigated cases, in ASDEX Upgrade and DIII-D. The plasma shaping, in particular, the plasma triangularity, contributes to the enhanced plasma response. But the shaping does not appear to be the sole factor—other factors such as the (higher) pedestal pressure and/or current can also lead to increased edge-peeling response.

Numerically derived parametrisation of optimal RMP coil phase as a guide to experiments on ASDEX Upgrade

Edge localised modes (ELMs) are a repetitive MHD instability, which may be mitigated or suppressed by the application of resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs). In tokamaks which have an upper and lower set of RMP coils, the applied spectrum of the RMPs can be tuned for optimal ELM control, by introducing a toroidal phase difference between the upper and lower rows. The magnitude of the outermost resonant component of the RMP field (other proposed criteria are discussed herein) has been shown experimentally to correlate with mitigated ELM frequency, and to be controllable by (Kirk et al 2013 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 53 043007). This suggests that ELM mitigation may be optimised by choosing , such that is maximised. However it is currently impractical to compute in advance of experiments. This motivates this computational study of the dependence of the optimal coil phase difference , on global plasma parameters and q95, in order to produce a simple parametrisation of . In this work, a set of tokamak equilibria spanning a wide range of (, q95) is produced, based on a reference equilibrium from an ASDEX Upgrade experiment. The MARS-F code (Liu et al 2000 Phys. Plasmas 7 3681) is then used to compute across this equilibrium set for toroidal mode numbers n = 1–4, both for the vacuum field and including the plasma response. The computational scan finds that for fixed plasma boundary shape, rotation profiles and toroidal mode number n, is a smoothly varying function of (, q95). A 2D quadratic function in (, q95) is used to parametrise , such that for given (, q95) and n, an estimate of may be made without requiring a plasma response computation. To quantify the uncertainty of the parametrisation relative to a plasma response computation, is also computed using MARS-F for a set of benchmarking points. Each benchmarking point consists of a distinct free boundary equilibrium reconstructed from an ASDEX Upgrade RMP experiment, and set of experimental kinetic profiles and coil currents. Comparing the MARS-F predictions of for these benchmarking points to predictions of the 2D quadratic, shows that relative to a plasma response computation with MARS-F the 2D quadratic is accurate to 26.5° for n = 1, and 20.6° for n = 2. Potential sources for uncertainty are assessed.

Edge localized mode control using n = 1 resonant magnetic perturbation in the EAST tokamak

A set of in-vessel resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) coil has been recently installed in EAST. It can generate a range of spectrum, and there is a relatively large window for edge localized mode (ELM) control according to the vacuum field modeling of the edge magnetic island overlapping area. Observation of mitigation and suppression of ELM in slow rotating plasmas during the application of an n = 1 RMP is presented in this paper. Strong ELM mitigation effect is observed in neutral beam injection heating plasmas. The ELM frequency increases by a factor of 5, and the crash amplitude and the particle flux are effectively reduced by a similar factor. Clear density pump-out and magnetic braking effects are observed during the application of RMP. Footprint splitting is observed during ELM mitigation and agrees well with vacuum field modelling. Strong ELM mitigation happens after a second sudden drop of plasma density, which indicates the possible effect due to field penetration of the resonant harmonics near the pedestal top, where the electron perpendicular rotation becomes flat and close to zero after the application of RMP. ELM suppression is achieved in a resonant window during the scan of the n = 1 RMP spectrum in radio-frequency (RF) dominant heating plasmas. The best spectrum for ELM suppression is consistent with the resonant peak of RMP by taking into account of linear magnetohydrodynamics plasma response. There is no mode locking during the application of n = 1 RMP in ELMy H-mode plasmas, although the maximal coil current is applied.

Experimental studies of high-confinement mode plasma response to non-axisymmetric magnetic perturbations in ASDEX Upgrade

The interaction of externally applied small non-axisymmetric magnetic perturbations (MP) with tokamak high-confinement mode (H-mode) plasmas is reviewed and illustrated by recent experiments in ASDEX Upgrade. The plasma response to the vacuum MP field is amplified by stable ideal kink modes with low toroidal mode number n driven by the H-mode edge pressure gradient (and associated bootstrap current) which is experimentally evidenced by an observable shift of the poloidal mode number m away from field alignment (m = qn, with q being the safety factor) at the response maximum. A torque scan experiment demonstrates the importance of the perpendicular electron flow for shielding of the resonant magnetic perturbation, as expected from a two-fluid MHD picture. Two significant effects of MP occur in H-mode plasmas at low pedestal collisionality, : (a) a reduction of the global plasma density by up to and (b) a reduction of the energy loss associated with edge localised modes (ELMs) by a factor of up to 9. A comprehensive database of ELM mitigation pulses at low in ASDEX Upgrade shows that the degree of ELM mitigation correlates with the reduction of pedestal pressure which in turn is limited and defined by the onset of ELMs, i. e. a modification of the ELM stability limit by the magnetic perturbation.