Operation experience of Tetrode vacuum tubes in J-PARC Ring RF system

Yamamoto, Masanobu; Furusawa, Masashi*; Hara, Keigo*; Hasegawa, Katsushi*; Nomura, Masahiro; Omori, Chihiro*; Shimada, Taihei; Sugiyama, Yasuyuki*; Tamura, Fumihiko; Yoshii, Masahito*

JPS Conference Proceedings (Internet), 33, p.011022_1 - 011022_6, 2021/03

https://doi.org/10.7566/JPSCP.33.011022

A Tetrode vacuum tubes (Thales TH589) are used in the J-PARC ring rf system. The operation has started in 2007, and the total operation time is more than 50,000 hours. There is no tube which reaches the end of life except an initial failure in the 3 GeV synchrotron. TH589 has a thoriated tungsten filament and it is carburized to suppress an evaporation of the thorium. The resistance of the filament decreases through the decarburization process after the filament operation has started. The tube constructor suggests that reduced filament voltage up to 10% compared with the rated value is effective to suppress the decarburization. However, the filament current increases even though the voltage is kept constant due to the resistance reduction, and it is observed that an increment of the power dissipation promotes the decarburization. This means that keeping the filament voltage constant is not enough; keeping the power dissipation constant is necessary to prolong the tube life time, and we employ a procedure to decrease the current regularly.