Control and calculation of the titanium sublimation pumping speed and re-ionisation in the MAST neutral beam injectors

• The titanium sublimation pumps for the MAST neutral beam injectors are described.
• Evaporation regimes are established to give constant pumping speed for the titanium sublimation pumps.
• The MCNP code is used to calculate the pumping speeds and gas profiles in the neutral beam injectors.
• The gas profiles are then used to calculate the level of re-ionisation in the beamline.

A high pumping speed is required in neutral beam injectors to minimise re-ionisation of the neutral beams. The neutral beam injectors on MAST use titanium sublimation pumps. These pumps do not have a constant pumping speed; their pumping speed depends on the gettering surface history and on both the integrated and applied gas load. In this paper we describe a method of maintaining a constant pumping speed, through different evaporation schemes, specifically suitable for operations of the MAST neutral beam injector beamlines for both short and relatively long beam pulses by measurement of the pressure in the beamline. In addition the MCNP code is then used to calculate the pumping speed and gas profile in the beamline by adjusting the input pumping speed to match the measured pressure. This allows the resulting gas profile to be used for calculation of the re-ionisation levels and an example is given.