The Effects of Loop Geometry on Lithium Wetting of a Divertor Plate in MEME

Liquid lithium is a strong candidate for use as a plasma facing material in magnetic confinement fusion devices.Flowing Lithium will need to fully wet open surfaces such as the divertor region of a reactor. This is difficult due to Lithium's high surface tension causing it form streamers and not spread out. . The Mockup Entry Module for East (MEME) was built to investigate lithium flowing across a divertor plate. The Lithium loop in MEME was built to be modular, allowing for research to focus on specific areas of the device without disrupting the rest of the system. One major problem identified during previous research was that the lithium inlet being attached to a cover facing the plate instead of on the plate itself caused lithium to wick to the cover and then drip onto the plate forming rivulets. The current phase of work moves the inlet onto the plate itself to improve the wetting of the plate. The next phase of work will focus on developing a distributor that will spread lithium over the entire plate and will implement a mesh plate geometry that will help the lithium remain evenly distributed over the length of the plate. Future work will also account for the presence of magneto-hydrodynamic effects on the liquid lithium, induced by magnetic fields present in any magnetic confinement device.