Progress in development and application of lithium based components for Tokamak

• Porous materials from W fibers filled with lithium applied as structural material of PFC in tokamaks.
• Tests of lithium PFC prototypes for steady-state operation are in progress in FTU and KTM tokamaks.
• Concept of lithium closed loop circulation for protection of PFC has been realized and confirmed experimentally in T-11M tokamak.
• Methods for PFC lithium surface cleaning and rehabilitation, lithium removal from tokamak wall has been demonstrated experimentally.

Experiments with lithium plasma facing components (PFCs) show promising results for the operation of hot plasma facilities and the general improvement of plasma parameters. The design and development of new tokamak plasma facing material (PFM) based on lithium capillary porous systems (CPS) are described in this paper.The recent progress in the development of limiters with different kinds of CPS is relevant for protection of tokamak PFCs from damage under normal operation, ELMs and disruptions. New PFM eliminates the lithium flux into plasma, its pollution and lithium accumulation.Here we present an overview of the design and the experimental tests of the liquid lithium limiters. These limiters are based on CPS with hard matrix from stainless steel mesh, molybdenum and tungsten. Different types of limiter have been taken into account: the horizontal and vertical rail type limiters with passive and active cooling for investigation the possibility to provide the closed lithium circulation in tokamak chamber; the ring CPS-based limiter for investigation of lithium behavior in limiter scrape-off layer (SOL).Here we also present the preliminary results of the application of the cryogenic techniques for lithium removal from the chamber wall after operation in hot plasma.