Isotope effect of hydrogen rapidly supplied from the metal storage bed

Hayashi, Takumi; Suzuki, Takumi; Shu, Wataru; Yamanishi, Toshihiko

In the tritium Storage and Delivery System (SDS) of ITER, how to control the isotope balance of DT fuel is one of the key issues for the stable and optimum operation. Basically, the equilibrium pressure of hydrogen-metal system has large isotope effect such as PH PD PT, however, there is only a limited data of the isotope composition of hydrogen mixture, which is supplied rapidly from the storage bed by a vacuum pump under ITER/SDS conditions. Therefore, in order to investigate the isotope composition of supplied hydrogen gases, a series of rapid supply experiments was performed using a 1/10 ITER scale ZrCo bed with a scroll pump as functions of bed temperature (573 K 623 K) and isotope composition of hydrogen mixture stored initially (H:D = 1:9 9:1). The isotope composition was measured by in-line mass spectrometer during continuous hydrogen supply. In this paper, the above results are summarized and the isotope effect is discussed. The effective way to control the isotope balance of DT fuel is also discussed with more moderate SDS design conditions.