An Innovative Approach to Prepare Liquid-Solid Dual-Phase Flowable Tritium Breeder with Low MHD Effect

In present paper, a novel flowable tritium breeder is prepared by mixing the Li₂TiO₃ micro-powders and liquid GaInSn alloy, where GaInSn alloy is used to simulate the fluid behaviors of lithium-based liquid tritium breeder, forming a type of composite characterized by liquid-solid dual phase. In detail, the effects of the volume fraction of ceramic micro-powders on viscosity and conductivity of the composite in magnetic field are the focus. The XRD results prove that the obtained Li₂TiO₃ micro-powders contained Li₂TiO₃ phase without impurities. The results shows that once the magnetic field intensity exceeds the critical value, the viscosity of liquid GaInSn metal becomes significantly greater than that of liquid-solid dual-phase composites. Furthermore, the addition of Li₂TiO₃ micro-powders could effectively reduce the magneto hydro dynamic (MHD) fluid effect, and the dual-phase composites exhibit comparatively lower flow resistance under the strong magnetic field. Moreover, the conductivity of the tritium breeder composites decreases rapidly with the addition of Li₂TiO₃ micro-powders. The MHD pressure-drop-increasing rate decreases with the increase of viscosity, which indicates that the addition of Li₂TiO₃ micro-powders effectively reduces the MHD effect. The conductivity of the composites increased slightly and then remained stable after static placing for several tens of minutes. The present investigation provides a novel insight into the fabrication strategy of tritium breeder materials with low MHD effect.