Fast Low-to-High Confinement Mode Bifurcation Dynamics in a Tokamak Edge Plasma Gyrokinetic Simulation.
Transport barrier formation and its relation to sheared flows in fluids and plasmas are of fundamental interest in various natural and laboratory observations and of critical importance in achieving an economical energy production in a magnetic fusion device. Here we report the first observation of an edge transport barrier formation event in an electrostatic gyrokinetic simulation carried out in a realistic diverted tokamak edge geometry under strong forcing by a high rate of heat deposition. The results show that turbulent Reynolds-stress-driven sheared E×B flows act in concert with neoclassical orbit loss to quench turbulent transport and form a transport barrier just inside the last closed magnetic flux surface.
A hybrid discontinuous Galerkin method for tokamak edge plasma simulations in global realistic geometry
Progressing toward more accurate and more efficient numerical codes forthe simulation of transport and turbulence in the edge plasma of tokamaks,we propose in this work a new hybrid discontinous Galerkin solver. Basedon 2D advection-diffusion conservation equations for the ion density and theparticle flux in the direction parallel to the magnetic field, the code simulatesplasma transport in the poloidal section of tokamaks, including the open fieldlines of the Scrape-off Layer (SOL) and the closed field lines of the core re-gion. The spatial discretization is based on a high-order hybrid DG schemeon unstructured meshes, which provides an arbitrary high-order accuracywhile reducing considerably the number of coupled degrees of freedom witha local condensation process. A discontinuity sensor is employed to identifycritical elements and regularize the solution with the introduction of artificialdiffusion. Based on a finite-element discretization, not constrained by a flux-aligned mesh, the code is able to describe plasma facing components of anycomplex shape using Bohm boundary conditions and to simulate the plasmain versatile magnetic equilibria, possibly extended up to the center. Nu-merical tests using a manufacturated solution show appropriate convergenceorders when varying independently the number of elements or the degree ofinterpolation. Validation is performed by benchmarking the code with thewell-referenced edge transport code SOLEDGE2D (Bufferandet al.2013,2015 [1, 2]) in the WEST geometry. Final numerical experiments show thecapacity of the code to deal with low-diffusion solutions.
Denitrification of PVA-immobilized denitrifying photosynthetic bacterium, Rhodobacter sphaeroides
Abstract A newly isolated denitrifying strain, Rhodobacter sphaeroides NII2 was immobilized in polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) gel, and the properties of the cells in the gel were examined. The immobilized cells had low or almost no denitrification activity, but the cells were activated by incubation in light with culture medium for denitrification containing 0.5% nitrate and no other nitrogen source. Cells grown in the dark were activated by incubation at an earlier stage and to a higher rate than the light-grown cells. The activation was markedly enhanced in the PVA gel with a low cell concentration. The immobilized cells consumed nitrate with a temporary accumulation of NO 2 and evolved nitrogen gas. The immobilized cells could use various organic compounds as electron donors for denitrification. Thus, the immobilized cells were applied to a continuous treatment of synthetic wastewater using an aparatus devised by this laboratory. The results showed an efficient removal of NO 3 -N from the test water.