Preliminary study of the performance characteristics of a mhd generator for the compact fusion advanced rankine cycle

The feasibility of high enthalpy extraction from the in-situ radiation-catalyzed MHD generator is studied numerically as a part of the compact fusion advanced Rankine cycle for fusion reactors. The cesium seeded mercury is selected as the working medium, which is superheated by synchrotron radiation from the fusion plasma. In the MHD channel, electrons are heated by Joule dissipation, leading the electron temperature to be higher than that of the mercury vapor. A new type of disk configuration is proposed in the present paper, which is referred to as a disk type generator with separate channels. By using this type of generator, the enthalpy extraction ratio reaches about 59.44% in the case of multi-power take-offs. The obtained cycle efficiency is about 32.1% for a simple cycle. In the case of the recuperative cycle the efficiency becomes about 35.8%. If some amorphous thermoelectric conversion can be installed, the cycle efficiency reaches about 41.7%, which is similar to conventional steam-turbine cycles.