Reliability and functional testing scheme for cold circulating pumps required to cool large size fusion grade superconducting magnets and cryo-pumps

Forced flow cooling using supercritical helium is the most preferable method due to the distinct advantages over the other cooling procedures for the superconducting magnets and cryo-pumps in fusion research devices. The flow requirements are high to fulfill the stability requirement of the magnet system during all operational modes. The flow requirements are met with cold circulation pump at 4 K level. These pumps require state of the art design due to constraints from temperature and associated process requirements with a demand of high efficiency. The future requirement of the future fusion research reactor (ITER) is foreseen as ∼2.7 kg/s mass flow rate with adiabatic efficiency > 70%. Against the future requirement, the maximum capacity ever built till now has a capacity of 1.2 kg/s mass flow with adiabatic efficiency-60%. Therefore, the up scaling of existing cold circulating pumps with improvement of efficiency is necessary to meet the future requirement. This paper discusses the major risks associated with cold circulating pumps and a test proposal with basic testing scheme to validate the performance.