Spacecraft potential control aboard Equator-S as a test for Cluster-II
The payload of Equator-S was complemented by the potential control device (PCD) to stabilise the electric potential of the spacecraft with respect to the ambient plasma. Low potentials are essential for accurate measurements of the thermal plasma. The design of PCD is inherited from instruments for Geotail and Cluster and utilises liquid metal ion sources generating a beam of indium ions at several keV. The set-up of the instrument and its interaction with the plasma instruments on board is presented. When the instrument was switched on during commissioning, unexpectedly high ignition and operating voltages of some ion emitters were observed. An extensive investigation was initiated and the results, which lead to an improved design for Cluster-II, are summarised. The cause of the abnormal behaviour could be linked to surface contamination of some emitters, which will be monitored and cured by on-board procedures in future. The mission operations on Equator-S were not at all affected, because of the high redundancy built into the instrument so that a sufficient number of perfectly operating emitters were available and were turned on routinely throughout the mission. Observations of the effect of spacecraft potential control on the plasma remained limited to just one event on January 8, 1998, which is analysed in detail. It is concluded that the ion beam lead to the predicted improvement of the particle measurements even outside the low density regions of the magnetosphere where the effect of spacecraft potential control would have been much more pronounced, and that the similar instruments for the four Cluster-II spacecraft to be launched in 2000 will be very important to ensure accurate plasma data from this mission.
Active Spacecraft Potential Control: Results From the Double Star Project
The ion emitter instrument "active spacecraft potential control" (ASPOC) has been used successfully in several magnetospheric missions including the European Space Agency Cluster Project. An improved version has been developed for the equatorial spacecraft of the Chinese-European Double Star mission (TC-1) launched in December 2003. The modifications include a new design of the ion emitter modules. As a result, higher currents than in previous missions can be achieved. The main objective of the investigation is the reduction of positive spacecraft potential in order to minimize perturbations to the plasma measurements onboard, in particular to the plasma electron instrument PEACE. These data show an almost complete suppression of photoelectrons when ASPOC is emitting at 30- to 50-muA beam current. The angular distribution of the electrons in the presence of the ion beam is investigated in detail. The measurement of ambient electron distributions is highly improved
Full-scale measurements of SO2 gas phase concentrations and slurry compositions in a wet flue gas desulphurisation spray absorber
Abstract Two measurement campaigns were carried out at ENERGI E2's Asnaes Power plant, unit 5. The unit has a capacity of 620 MW e and is equipped with a wet flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) plant employing a counter-current spray absorber with five spray levels. In the first campaign, the power plant was firing Orimulsion ® with 2.85 wt% S resulting in a flue gas concentration of SO 2 exceeding 2000 ppmv. In the second campaign, the fuel applied was a low-S blended coal and the SO 2 concentration in the raw gas was around 400 ppmv. A novel probe for in situ sampling of gas phase concentrations in wet FGD spray absorbers was developed and applied for measuring axial profiles of the SO 2 gas phase concentrations in the absorber. The expected decrease in SO 2 concentrations along the height of the absorber was found in the spray section (from height 26.5 to 36.2 m) whereas the SO 2 concentration above the holding tank and below the gas inlet was quite low probably due to long local residence times in the region. Horizontal variations, due to somewhat different flow conditions near the column wall were investigated and the SO 2 concentrations were found to be higher near the wall. Measurements at different gross loads showed that the SO 2 gas phase concentration at a given position inside the absorber was roughly linearly related to the L/G ratio in the measuring interval. Turning off one of the lower spray levels, while burning coal with low S content, did not lower the overall removal efficiency of the absorber. However, the SO 2 gas phase concentration inside the lower part of the absorber was increased by a factor of 2–3. Measurements of slurry pH at different positions showed a decrease of approximately 0.5 units from the upper to the lower part of the absorber. The full-scale measurements provide a detailed set of experimental data for validation of mathematical models of a wet FGD spray absorber.