Tritium evacuataion performance of a large oil-free reciprocating pump

In fusion reactors large dry vacuum and transfer pumps are needed for various applications such as backing and roughing for torus evacuation, gas transfer and processing in the fuel cycle, and facility vacuum for safety systems. There are some commercial use oil-free pumps, however, most of all these pumps have low pumping function for hydrogen gases and also at high discharge pressure. A large oil-free reciprocating pump has been developed for high tritium services at the Tritium Process Laboratory (TPL) in the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI). This pump is mainly composed four-stage compression vertical cylinders, a single acting piston with piston rings made by carbon polyimide composite and two buffer tanks. Each stage in the cylinder has 16 special check valves. The process line is isolated completely to crank-case oil by dynamic metal bellows. Design pumping speed is 54 m3/hr for hydrogen gas at 5 Torr of discharge pressures. After cold testing in TPL, this pump was shipped and installed in the Tritium Systems Test Assembly (TSTA) loop of the Los Alamos National Laboratory under the US-Japan Collaboration program on fusion technology