Fuskite® preliminary experimental tests based on permeation against vacuum for hydrogen recovery as a potential application in Pb15.7Li loop systems

Tritium recovery in fusion reactors is one of the main goals in R&D, as a limited inventory is available and its uneconomic production. That is the reason why efficient technologies are indispensable to be developed in order to achieve fast tritium recovery and its subsequent reuse in the system for increasing its self-sufficiency. In this work a flexible tritium recovery demonstrator prototype based on permeation against vacuum concept has been designed and manufactured, as well as all necessary equipment for a Pb15.7Li loop implementation in order to test and demonstrate that an in-pipe integrated solution is possible, and at the same time, to validate the manufacturing process. Thus, efficient rates for more optimized future models could be then extrapolated. The aim of this paper is to show the different testing results that have been carried out in this research project. These results include permeation properties of the material considered for the permeator, as long as it has been manufactured with a novel technique, Selective Laser Melting. They also include vacuum tests on the permeator to quantify possible leakages and to set up and analyze the capability to generate vacuum inside the permeator, and finally, permeation tests with the prototype, in a first stage with a gas mixture of hydrogen and argon inside the loop instead of Pb15.7Li.