Vadodara’s cryogenic expertise finds a place in global fusion project | India Business News

Vacuum-vessel thermal shields at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Bengaluru: When a critical component of the world’s largest fusion research project developed microscopic cracks, the solution came from a Gujarat company with expertise in handling materials at temperatures close to absolute zero.INOX India, through its INOXCVA brand, said on Thursday that it has completed repairs to the vacuum-vessel thermal shields at the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), the nuclear-fusion project being built in southern France.ITER is designed to study whether nuclear fusion—the process that powers the sun—can eventually provide an abundant new source of energy. At the heart of its design are superconducting magnets that confine the fusion plasma. While the plasma can reach around 100 million degrees Celsius, the magnets have to be maintained at about 4 kelvin, or minus 269 degrees Celsius.Cryogenic engineering makes it possible to maintain these ultra-low temperatures, placing INOX India’s expertise at the centre of one of the world’s most ambitious scientific projects.The Vadodara-headquartered company began making industrial-scale cryogenic equipment in 1992 and has since expanded into industrial gases, LNG, space and scientific research.“Superconductivity works only when you go to extremely low temperatures, almost to liquid helium temperature of 4 kelvin,” Parag Kulkarni, executive director at INOX India, told TOI.INOX’s association with ITER began around 2014, when India was looking to contribute industrial capabilities to the project. The company was initially asked to develop a prototype for ITER’s cryogenic piping system alongside a European company.“They first asked us to make a prototype and prove that all the parameters were met,” Kulkarni said.The thermal-shield repair programme posed a more complex challenge. The shields sit between the vacuum vessel containing the superheated plasma and the superconducting magnets, protecting the latter from heat. Microscopic cracks developed in cooling pipes because of chlorine contamination, requiring around 11 km of pipework to be removed and a tonne of silver coating to be ground away.The panels were transported from France to India, where INOX machined away the contaminated material, manufactured and welded replacement pipes, and ensured that the panels retained their precise original shape. Five-axis machining and laser mapping were used, as even small distortions could prevent the panels from fitting back into the tokamak.