Lithium pellet production (LiPP): A device for the production of small spheres of lithium

With lithium as a fusion material gaining popularity, a method for producing lithium pellets relatively quickly has been developed for NSTX. The Lithium Pellet Production device is based on an injector with a sub-millimeter diameter orifice and relies on a jet of liquid lithium breaking apart into small spheres via the Plateau-Rayleigh instability. A prototype device is presented in this paper and for a pressure difference of ΔP = 5 Torr, spheres with diameters between 0.91 < D < 1.37 mm have been produced with an average diameter of D = 1.14 mm, which agrees with the developed theory. Successive tests performed at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory with Wood's metal have confirmed the dependence of sphere diameter on pressure difference as predicted.