Monitoring and data acquisition of the high speed hydrogen pellet in SPINS

• Published in: Fusion engineering and design Vol. 112; pp. 757 - 760
• Main Authors: Mukherjee, Samiran Shanti, Mishra, Jyotishankar, Gangradey, Ranjana, Dutta, Pramit, Rastogi, Naveen, Panchal, Paresh, Nayak, Pratik, Agarwal, Jyoti, Bairagi, Pawan, Patel, Haresh, Sharma, Hardik
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 15.11.2016; Elsevier Science Ltd
• Subjects: Control; Control systems; Data acquisition; Data acquisition systems; Diagnostic systems; Frames per second; Fusion; High speed; High temperature physics; High temperature plasmas; Hydrogen; Injection molding; Injectors; Pellet; Pellets; Plasma; Plasma physics; Spent nuclear fuels; Plasma; Pellet; Control; Data acquisition; Fusion
• ISSN: 0920-3796; 1873-7196
• DOI: 10.1016/j.fusengdes.2016.05.027

•Pellet INjector System with monitoring and data acquisition is described.•A high speed camera was used to view pellet size, and its flight trajectory.•PXI based high speed control system is used data acquisition.•Pellets of length 2–4.8mm and speed 250–750m/s were obtained. Injection of solid hydrogen pellets is an efficient way of replenishing the spent fuel in high temperature plasmas. Aiming that, a Single Pellet INjector System (SPINS) is developed at Institute for Plasma Research (IPR), India, to initiate pellet injection related research in SST-1. The pellet injector is controlled by a PXI system based data acquisition and control (DAC) system for pellet formation, precise firing control, data collection and diagnostics. The velocity of high speed moving pellets is estimated by using two sets of light gate diagnostic. Apart from light gate, a fast framing camera is used to measure the pellet size and its speed. The pellet images are captured at a frame rate of ∼200,000 frames per second at (128×64) pixel resolution with an exposure time of 1μs. Using these diagnostic, various cylindrical pellets of length ranging from 2 to 4.8mm and speed 250–750m/s were successfully obtained. This paper describes the control and data acquisition system of SPINS, the techniques for measurement of pellet velocity and capturing images of high speed moving pellet.