Chamber clearing study relevance to Z-pinch power plants

This paper presents the work recently conducted at UCLA for the Z-pinch vapour clearing study. The superheated flibe vapour generated by a high-current, pulsed electrical discharge expands inside a temperature-controlled chamber and condenses in contact with the liquid. Vapour clearing rates are evaluated from the measured pressure history with the presence of argon gas pressure. The results show that the condensation decay time varies from 2.65 to 4.01 ms as argon gas pressure increases from 2 to 20 torr. These initial results suggest that there appears to be a large design window for Z-pinch vapour clearing even in the presence of an argon gas pressure of 20 torr. (author)