Design of EAST lower divertor by considering target erosion and tungsten ion transport during the external impurity seeding

To demonstrate the performance of tungsten (W) as the divertor target material and to solve the power handling problem during high power long-pulse discharge, the upgrade of EAST lower divertor is planned. In this work, the physical design of the W divertor is presented by using 2D edge plasma code SOLPS and Monte Carlo impurity transport code DIVIMP. The optimized divertor geometry is proposed after systematic examination of target shapes, target slant angles and the pump opening locations. The performance of the designed divertor is further assessed by impurity seeding. By comparing the medium and high power discharges with argon (Ar) seeding, the differences on the divertor power radiation and impurity core accumulation are distinguished. The simulated effective ion charge Zeff fits well the scaling law, which is based on multi-machine database. Ar seeding and neon (Ne) seeding scans are carried out separately. The simulation results indicate Ar has higher power radiation efficiency than that of Ne, thus promoting the achievement of plasma detachment. However, the core compatibility with Ar is worse than with Ne. The W target erosion and W impurity transport during impurity seeding are simulated by the DIVIMP–SOLPS coupled modeling. It illustrates that under the similar divertor plasma conditions, Ar seeding causes more serious W erosion and more severe core contamination by W impurity, than Ne seeding. Finally, the divertor in–out asymmetry is studied by considering electromagnetic drifts. The simulation results manifest that the designed open vertical inner target reduces in–out asymmetry due to that its weak power radiation capability is offset by the ion flow driven by the drifts. In addition, the designed divertor is compatible with the quasi snowflake magnetic configuration. These studies will improve the understanding of W target sputtering and W impurity transport control during the radiative divertor discharges for CFETR/DEMO.