Fabrication of Li2TiO3 pebble by studying the effect of binder content and sintering temperature on pellets

Abstract

Li2TiO3 ceramic is being considered as promising solid breeder materials in tritium breeding blanket of thermonuclear fusion reactors, because of its reasonable lithium atom density, prominent tritium release rate at low temperatures between 200 to 400oC, its low activation characteristics, low thermal expansion coefficient, high thermal conductivity. From design aspect it has found that blanket made of spherical pebble is advantageous because it impart good features like, easy for making complex shapes blanket, uniform pore network, low sensitivity to irradiation damage and cracking, high average bed density and good purge gas drop.
In this work, Li2TiO3 powder was prepared by solid state route. Li2TiO3 pellets with three different binder content, i.e. 3%, 5% and 7% PVA, were prepared. Then, the effect of binder content and sintering temperature (three different temperatures 9000C, 10000C, and 11000C) on density, thermal expansion and microstructure were investigated. Based on this result, Li2TiO3 pebble was fabricated with 3 wt% PVA by extrusion and spheronisation process and after sintering bulk density was measured.