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37 min ago 2 min read
Air Liquide Engineering & Construction, a subsidiary of the industrial gas major, has commissioned its liquid nitrogen plant to support the cryogenic infrastructure of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) cryoplant at the Tokamak Complex, southern France.
In partnership with Fusion for Energy (F4E), the organisation responsible for managing Europe’s contribution to ITER, Air Liquide has completed testing of two nitrogen refrigerators that have a cooling power of 1,300 kW at -193°C.
The partnership between Air Liquide and F4E began in 2013, covering the engineering, procurement, installation, and testing of the nitrogen facility and its supporting systems.
In 2014, F4E expected the project to cost €65m ($75m) and be commissioned within five years.
The nitrogen plant will serve as a pre-cooling system for ITER’s helium refrigeration units.
These helium refrigerators will generate supercritical helium at 4 K (-269°C) to cool the reactor’s superconducting magnets, supply helium to cryopumps used to maintain vacuum conditions inside the reactor, and provide gaseous helium at 80 K (-193°C) for thermal shielding.
ITER’s cryoplant will cool down, move, process, and store the cryogenic fluids used in ITER’s magnetic fusion device.
The ITER project aims to demonstrate nuclear fusion as a carbon-free, long-term energy source on a commercial scale.
The ITER project is a between 35 countries, including China, Europe, Japan, India, the Republic of Korea, Russia, and the US.
