SILICON OIL DC200(R)5CST AS AN ALTERNATIVE COOLANT FOR CVD DIAMOND WINDOWS

The production of high power mm-wave radiation is a key technology in large fusion devices, since it is required for localized plasma heating and current drive. Transmission windows are necessary to keep the vacuum in the gyrotron system and also act as tritium barriers. With its excellent optical, thermal and mechanical properties, synthetic CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) diamond is the state of the art material for the cw transmission of the mm-wave beams produced by high power gyrotrons.

The gyrotrons foreseen for the W7-X stellarator are designed for cw operation with 1 MW output power at 140 GHz. The output window unit is designed by TED (Thales Electron Devices, France) using a single edge circumferentially cooled CVD-diamond disc with an aperture of 88 mm. The window unit is cooled by de-ionized water which is considered as chemical aggressive and might cause corrosion in particular at the brazing. The use of a different coolant such as silicon oil could prevent this issue.

The cooling circuit has been simulated by steady-state CFD analysis. A total power generation of 1 kW (RF transmission losses) with pure Gaussian distribution has been assumed for the diamond disc. The performance of both water and the industrial silicon oil DC200(R) have been investigated and compared with a focus on the temperature distribution on the disc, the pressure drop across the cooling path and the heat flux distribution. Although the silicon oil has a higher viscosity (~x5), lower heat capacity (~x1/2) and lower thermal conductivity (~x1/3), it has proven to be a good candidate as alternative to water.