A physical model has been developed which includes high temperature liquid lithium evaporation, the expanding motion of the liquid lithium vapour cloud, the shielding effects of the vapour cloud on incident plasma particle bombardments, ejection suppressed analysis and a perpendicular field proposal, and photon radiation, heat flux and transport in the lithium vapour cloud plasma. The engineering outline design scheme and the relevant parameters for the liquid lithium surface divertor target plate configured by discrete tiny capillary arrays have been established. Splashing can be suppressed by utilizing discrete and electrical insulating capillary porous systems (CPSs), since the conductivity among the capillary cells has been cut off by adopting a special kind of ceramic composite material made of a non-conducting and unbreakable composite which is able to withstand high temperatures. The formula to describe the temperature-dependent evaporation power has been derived. The maximum temperature increases of the discrete plasma-facing liquid lithium surface divertor target plate have been compared under the high energy flux deposition of 10 MJ m−2 during a 1 ms time duration with or without evaporation power. The results show that a high surface heat load can be withstood by the designed discrete plasma-facing liquid lithium surface divertor target plate due to violent evaporation. The energy deposition of incident energetic particles and weakly relativistic electrons from the scrape-off layer have been calculated. A laboratory experimental facility to simulate liquid lithium surface interactions with plasma has been set up. Research on lithium evaporation, re-deposition and ejection suppressed experiments under high density linear plasma dumping is ongoing.
A simplified lithium vapor box divertor