Design of a cw, low-energy, high-power superconducting linac for environmental applications

Abstract

The treatment of flue gases from power plants and municipal or industrial wastewater using electron beam irradiation technology has been successfully demonstrated in small-scale pilot plants. The beam energy requirement is rather modest, on the order of a few MeV; however, the adoption of the technology at an industrial scale requires the availability of high beam power, of the order of 1 MW, in a cost effective way. In this article we present the design of a compact superconducting accelerator capable of delivering a cw electron beam with a current of 1 A and an energy of 1 MeV. The main components are an rf-gridded thermionic gun and a conduction cooled β=0.5 elliptical Nb3Sn cavity with dual coaxial power couplers. An engineering and cost analysis shows that the proposed design would result in a processing cost competitive with alternative treatment methods.