August 8, 2024
Xcimer Energy is developing the design of a fusion pilot plant for power production from inertial fusion energy. Xcimer’s laser architecture, the key enabling technology, combines KrF excimer amplifiers and a novel pulse compression system to achieve high driver energies at low laser hardware cost. This driver advance allows for an attractive fusion plant design that uses an adaptation of the well-established and documented HYLIFE thick liquid-wall chamber concept to a commercial design. Xcimer has evaluated various options for its liquid wall and blanket systems and determined flibe to be the leading candidate for its fusion plant design. Flibe fusion blankets have significant benefits in terms of high breeding ratio and there is significant experience with molten salt systems in fission and clean energy technologies. Key challenges in developing flibe breeding blankets are defining how to mitigate corrosion that can be caused by TF produced during the breeding reactions and extraction of tritium from the fusion blanket. The Combined Redox Extraction (CoRExt) process proposed by the team at SRNL simultaneously performs redox control on flibe in a breeding blanket while extracting tritium. While the electrochemical reaction is driven by a galvanic electrochemical potential, there is the potential for only chemical reaction to occur at the active metal (e.g. Be electrode) in the system. If successful, this project will combine the unit operations for redox control and tritium extraction in flibe and increase their effectiveness. Both unit operations require high surface area contact of the salt with the walls and/or with a sweep gas. By combining these methods into a single system, it will reduce pressure drop while increasing the efficiency of both unit operations due to their proximity and shorter mass transfer differences.