MHD Effects on Vapor Flow in a Conductive Fluid

Several advanced fusion reactor design concepts for MFE power generation incorporate liquid metal as a protective layer or heat transfer medium. The presence of high magnetic fields, necessary to confine the plasma fuel in the core region of the device, effect these liquid metal systems. Recently computational methods have just begun to be able to give some insight into the effects of these high magnetic fields on the liquid metal systems, however experimental data is needed to verify the results of the computations and determine feasibility where computational methods are not possible due to computer resources or the lack of suitable models to deal with turbulence suppression. A series of experiments conducted with helium gas injection (16 - 85 cm³/s) through a 1.6 mm injector into a 2.54 cm liquid metal pool (NaK) with a horizontal magnetic field from 0-6T have been conducted to evaluate a particular reactor power extraction process and to serve as a data base for computational comparison.