First Results of Pellet Injection Experiments on EAST

A new pellet injection system was installed on the EAST tokamak and preliminary experiments were performed during the 2012 run campaign. Typical phenomena associated with deuterium pellet injection into a plasma discharge have been observed including sudden increases of the electron density and Hα/Da emission intensity as well as a significant decrease in plasma electron temperature. Profiles have been studied in order to understand the influence of pellet fuelling on EAST discharges. Even though the injector was specifically designed for plasma fu- elling, ELM triggering using the pellet injection has also been tested. In order to find appropriate parameters for triggering ELMs in H-mode plasmas, scanning of the pellet injection speed was employed for pellets injected from both the high field side and low field side of the plasma column. It has been observed that low-speed pellets injected into H-mode plasma from the low-field side could trigger an ELM followed by a number of smaller induced ELMs at about 300 Hz.

Fuelling and Diagnostics with Pellet Injection in the HL-1M Tokamak

The pellet injection experiments for fuelling and diagnostics have been carried out on the HL-1M tokamak. The eight-pellet injector was installed on HL-1M. A reliable monitordetector and camera system was set up to take initial pellet photographs and measure the initial pellet speed and size. High fuelling efficiency of 60 % - 100 % and a density profile with a peaking factor of 1.8 - 2.0 were obtained. The maximum density close to 10^14/cm^3 in HL-1M was achieved with newly optimized combined fuelling techniques. Two typical models of pellet ablation have been utilized for simulative calculation of the ablation rates in HL-1M. In comparison with the distribution of the measured Hα emission intensity from the digital data of the CCD camera, the experimental result seems more optimistic for core fuelling than theoretical predictions by the two models. The safety factor profile q（r） has been extracted from the information provided by the CCD camera during the pellet injection. The reliability of the measured results depends mainly on the calibration of the imaging space position. Based on the calibration, the measured q-profile becomes more reasonable than those published previously for the same shot number and same photograph.

Scaling of the Density Peak with Pellet Injection in ITER

Scalings of the density peak and pellet penetration length in ITER are developed based on simulations using 1.5D BALDUR integrated predictive modeling code. In these simulations, the pellet ablation is described by the Neutral Gas Shielding （NGS） model with grad-B drift effect taken into account. The NGS pellet model is coupled with a plasma core transport model, which is a combination of an MMM95 anomalous transport model and an NCLASS neoclassical transport model. The BALDUR code with a combination of MMM95 and NCLASS models, together with the NGS model, is used to simulate the time evolution of plasma current, ion and electron temperatures, and density profiles for ITER standard type I ELMy H-mode discharges during the pellet injection. As a result, the scaling of the density peak and pellet penetration length at peak density can be established using this set of predictive simulations that covers a wide range of ITER plasma conditions and pellet parameters. The multiple regression technique is utilized in the development of the scalings. It is found that the scaling for density at center is sensitive to both the plasma and pellet parameters; whereas the scalings for density and location of the additional peak are sensitive to the pellet parameters only.

Development of the pellet injection system on the J-TEXT tokamak

Pellet injection is an attractive technology for core-fueling and magnetohydrodynamic study in magnetic-conflnement fusion devices like tokamaks and stellarators.It can inject solid hydrogen/deuterium pellets into the plasma with deeper density deposition compared with other fueling methods,such as gas pufflng.A three-barrel H_(2)pellet injection system was installed on the J-TEXT tokamak and experiments were carried out.The pellets are formed in three barrels cooled by a cryocooler and compressor system at around 9 K,and are 0.8 mm/1 mm diameter and 0.8 mm length.The pellet is launched by helium propellant gas and injected from the lowfleld side of the plasma.The normal range of pellet speed is 210–310 m s^(-1)for different propellant gas pressures.Due to the three-barrel structure,the number of injected pellets can be adjusted between one and three.Pellets can be launched sequentially with arbitrary time intervals,which enables flexible applications.The results of the experiments show that pellet fueling efflciency can reach 50%.The energy conflnement time increased by about 7.5–10 ms after pellet injection.

Achieving temporary divertor plasma detachment with MARFE events by pellet injection in the EAST superconducting tokamak

A new pellet injection system has been equipped on the experimental advanced superconducting tokamak（EAST） in the 2012 campaign,with a pellet size of Ф 2 mm×2 mm,a frequency of1 Hz–10 Hz and velocity of 150 m s^-1–300 m s^-1.The deuterium pellet is well-known for plasma fuelling as well as for triggering the edge localized mode（ELM）.In the 2012 campaign,pellet injection experiments were successfully carried out on EAST.Temporary plasma detachment achieved by deuterium pellets has been observed in a double null（DN） divertor configuration,with multi-pellet injections at a repetition frequency of 2 Hz.The partial detachment of the outer divertors and complete detachment of the inner divertors was achieved after 35 ms of each pellet injection,which have a duration of 30–60 ms with the maximum degree of detachment（DOD） reaching 3.5 and 37,respectively.Meanwhile,the multifaceted asymmetric radiation from the edge（MARFE） phenomena was also observed at the high field side（HFS） near both the lower and upper X-points with radiation loss suddenly increased to about 15%–70%,which may be the main cause of divertor plasma detachment.The temporary detachment induced by pellet injection may act as a new way to study divertor detachment behaviors.

Improvement of Plasma Performance Using Carbon Pellet Injection in Large Helical Device

A cylindrical carbon pellet with a size of 1.2L x 1.2φ mm to 1.8L x 1.8φ mm and a velocity of 100 m/s to 300 m/s was injected into large helical device （LHD） for an efficient fueling based on its deeper deposition instead of hydrogen gas puffing and ice pellet injection. Electron density increment of Ane = 10^14 cm^-3 is successfully obtained by single carbon pellet injection without plasma collapse. Typical density and temperature of the ablation plasma of the carbon pellet, e.g., 6.5× 10^16 cm^-3 and 2.5 eV for CII, are examined respectively by spectroscopic method. A confinement improvement up to 50% compared to ISS-95 stellarator scaling is clearly observed in a relatively low-density regime of ne = 2 × 10^13 cm^-3 to 4×10^13 cm^-3, and high ion temperature Ti（0） of about 6 keV is also observed with an internal transport barrier at ne = 1.2 × 10^13 cm^-3. In particular, the improvement in the ion temperature largely exceeds that observed in hydrogen gas-puffed discharges, which typically ranges below 3 keV.

Comparison of ELM-Filament Mitigation Between Supersonic Molecular Beam Injection and Pellet Injection on HL-2A

On HL-2A,two different injections（supersonic molecular beam injection（SMBI）and pellet injection（PI）） are used to mitigate edge localized mode（ELM）-filament convective transport.The changes of their characteristics are studied in this paper.A high spatiotemporal resolution probe shows there are many similar phenomena,and the filament density amplitude and radial velocity are both suppressed.Our statistical results indicate that：the velocity suppression comes from the decrease of filament density and temperature;the transient particle and heat fluxes drop strongly;and long-range correlation along a magnetic flux surface also decreases,when the electron-ion collisionality increases significantly,which may have a role on the filament parallel current during ELM mitigation.

Pellet Injection from High Field Side in ITER

Core fueling is plasmas to reach enhanced confinement regime and elevate output fusion power. However it is not easy to do so. Making use of the 2-D Kuteev lentil model, including kinetic effects, we find that existing pellet injection techniques will not meet core-fueling requirements for ITER-FEAT. A pressureas high as 254 MPa should be applied to a pellet accelerator 200 cm-long single-stage pneumatic gun, in order to accelerate a pellet of radius rpo = 0. 5 cm to a velocity of νp0, 24 × 10^5cm·s^-1 penetrating 100 cm into the ITER plasma core.

Pellet Injection Experiments in the HL-2A Tokamak

The advantages of pellet injection as a competitive means of fuelling a tokamak are well known. They include： （ 1 ） deep deposition of fuel, （ 2 ） better fuelling efficiency, （ 3 ） purer plasma, and so on. Meanwhile, improving plasma performance by pellet injection has been proven in many tokamak experiments. The deposition of pellet particles following pellet injection causes a temporal change of the local plasma temperature and density gradients which affects the transport properties of the plasma, so pellet injection can be used as a method of studying the transport process as well.

Electron Heat Transport during Center Fuelling by Pellet Injection on HL-2A Tokamak

The improved energy confinement has been observed in many tokamaks with center pellet injection since 1980＇s. The pellet enhanced performance （ PEP ） was achieved with high power additional heating in JET and other large tokamaks. The mechanism of the PEP mode has been analyzed theoretically . The analysis shows that a few mechanisms are involved in the reduction of anomalous transport and the relative weight of these mechanisms depends on the experimental conditions. In this paper we report the pellet injection experiment results without auxiliary heating on HL-2A tokamak. Our works focus on the investigation of the electron heat transport in ohmic discharges with center pellet fuelling.

Simulation of deuterium pellet ablation and deposition in the EAST tokamak with HPI2 code

Pellet injection is a primary method for fueling the plasma in magnetic confinement devices.For that goal the knowledges of pellet ablation and deposition profiles are critical.In the present study,the pellet fueling code HPI2 was used to predict the ablation and deposition profiles of deuterium pellets injected into a typical H-mode discharge on the EAST tokamak.Pellet ablation and deposition profiles were evaluated for various pellet injection locations,with the aim at optimizing the pellet injection to obtain a deep fueling depth.In this study,we investigate the effect of the injection angle on the deposition depth of the pellet at different velocities and sizes.The ablation and deposition of the injected pellet are mainly studied at each injection position for three different injection angles:0°,45°,and 60°.The pellet injection on the high field side(HFS)can achieve a more ideal deposition depth than on the low field side(LFS).Among these angles,horizontal injection on the middle plane is relatively better on either the HFS or the LFS.When the injection location is 0.468 m below the middle plane on the HFS or 0.40 m above the middle plane of the LFS,it can achieve a similar deposition depth to the one of its corresponding side.When the pre-cooling effect is taken into account,the deposition depth is predicted to increase only slightly when the pellet is launched from the HFS.The findings of this study will serve as a reference for the update of pellet injection systems for the EAST tokamak.

Estimate of the Deposition Profile of Carbon Pellets Using a High-Speed VUV Imaging System in the LHD

The deposition profile of the impurity pellet is measured by a two-dimensional fast- framing vacuum ultraviolet （VUV） camera system in the large helical device （LHD）. The fast framing camera selectively measures the emission from the hydrogen-like ions of carbon （C VI） with a frame rate of several kHz. From the emission profile of the hydrogen-like carbon ions, which are in the process of ionization, the initial deposition profile of the carbon is estimated using a simple one-dimensional transport model.

Investigation of Edge Fluctuation Characteristics on the HL-2A Tokamak

The edge plasma fluctuation characteristics are studied by the fast reciprocating scanning 6-probes in the boundary region. These probes can measure edge plasma temperature, density, poloidal electric field, radial electric field, Reynolds stress, and their profiles in once discharges. Measurement results are used to analyze plasma confinement, turbulent fluctuations and their correlation characteristics during multi-shot pellet injection （MPI） , supersonic molecular beam injection （SMB1） and electron cyclotron resonant heating （ ECRH ） discharges.