Design and development of 3 MeV, 30 kW DC industrial electron accelerator at Electron Beam Centre, Kharghar

High power electron beam accelerators are becoming an important tool for industrial radiation process applications. Keeping this in mind, a 3 MeV, 10 mA, 30 kW DC industrial electron accelerator has been designed and is in advanced stage of development at Electron Beam Center, Kharghar, Navi Mumbai. The operating range of this accelerator is 1 MeV to 3 MeV with maximum beam current of 10 mA. Electron beam at 5 keV is generated in electron gun with LaB6 cathode and is injected into accelerating column at a vacuum of 10-7 torr. After acceleration the beam is scanned and taken out in air through a 100 cm X 7 cm titanium window for radiation processing applications. The high voltage accelerating power supply is based on a capacitive coupled parallel fed voltage multiplier scheme operating at 120 kHz. A 50 kW oscillator feeds power to high voltage multiplier column. The electron gun, accelerating column and high voltage multiplier column are housed in accelerator tank filled with SF6 gas insulation at 6 kg/cm2. The accelerator is located in a RCC building with product conveyor for handling products. A central computerized control system is adopted for operation of the accelerator. Accelerator is in the advance stage of commissioning. Many of the subsystems have been commissioned and tested. This paper describes the design details and current status of the accelerator and various subsystems. (author)