Simulation of Be–C interaction dynamics in mixed Be/C layers formed in experiments at PISCES-B

Abstract The mitigation of carbon chemical erosion observed in PISCES-B due to the presence of a minor beryllium concentration in plasma can be determined to a large extent by formation of carbide (Be2C) on the plasma-facing surface. To study this, dedicated beryllium seeding experiments in the linear plasma simulator PISCES-B have been simulated using the Monte-Carlo code ERO. The spectroscopy is used to benchmark the simulations against observations. A temporal dependent evolution of the beryllium carbide formation on the carbon surface of the target is introduced on the basis of characteristic time scales. The influence of carbide formation on the effective mitigation time for chemical erosion is investigated.