A design was made for a flow injection manifold to inject gas into the flow test model of the TECH microwave plasma reactor. The manifold incorpo- rates separate inlets for the injection of purely...Show moreA design was made for a flow injection manifold to inject gas into the flow test model of the TECH microwave plasma reactor. The manifold incorpo- rates separate inlets for the injection of purely poloidal or mixed toroidal and poloidal flow into the toroidally shaped TECH reactor. Numerical simulations were performed on prospective injection geometries to verify the compliance of the produced velocity field with requirements on the uniformity of the flow and the relative size of the poloidal and toroidal flow components for each input. Modifications to the design were in- cluded to allow for 3D printing of the injection manifold. It was found that the final design for the injection manifold satisfies the uniformity re- quirements when an equal flow is provided to both inputs, but not when flow is provided to the poloidal input alone.Show less
The goal of this thesis is to design a setup which can be used as a prototype for the TECH reactor. The TECH reactor is a cylinder with rounded edges, in which a microwave plasma will be formed....Show moreThe goal of this thesis is to design a setup which can be used as a prototype for the TECH reactor. The TECH reactor is a cylinder with rounded edges, in which a microwave plasma will be formed. The cavity should resonate with the right eigenmode at a constant frequency of 2.45 GHz, and the excitation structure should produce a reflection coefficient of smaller than 0.8, enabling a tuning device to maximize power transfer. These conditions must hold for a broad range of conductivities of the plasma. Firstly, the effect of a resonance frequency tuning ring inside the cavity was researched, in order to keep the right eigenmode at a constant frequency of 2.45 GHz. Secondly, the excitation structure was optimized to ensure that at the relevant plasma conductivities, the reflections from the setup were minimized. Later simulations yielded that for almost all conductivities of the plasma, the setup was sufficiently impedance matched to the waveguide to enable an auto tuning device to prevent reflections. Thirdly, unexpected eigenmodes of the cavity were discovered. Therefore, adjustments were made to the cavity such that the resonance frequencies of other modes would not be close to 2.45 GHz, to prevent the excitation of these modes. This thesis continued the work of De Man [3]. In the end, the simulations yielded promising results and the setup is almost fully designed. Soon, experiments with the electric field in the cavity can be carried out, which form an important step towards being able to measure plasma breakdown.Show less
For an optical filter consisting of four cascaded optical cavities, two different methods of locking the four cavities to resonance have been investigated. The first being the classical dither...Show moreFor an optical filter consisting of four cascaded optical cavities, two different methods of locking the four cavities to resonance have been investigated. The first being the classical dither locking technique, making use of lock-in amplification to provide PID feedback upon a modulated cavity length. This method has been experimentally implemented using a microcontroller. The second method is a non-linear Q-learning approach based upon dither locking, which has proven capable to lock at least two cavities in simulations. The First method would require the use of polarising beam splitters and waveplates between the cascaded cavities to measure uncoupled reflections, while the second method would require only the total coupled reflection.Show less
