THE NEW BAKING SYSTEM FOR THE RFX VACUUM VESSEL

A heating system based on eddy currents has been developed for the vac uum vessel of the RFX Reversed Field Pinch device. After a testing pha se, carried out at low power, the final power supply system has been d esigned and installed. It has been used during last year to bake out t he vessel and the graphite first wall up to 320 degrees C. Recently th e heating system has been completed with a control system that allows for baking sessions with an automatic control of the vacuum vessel tem perature and for pulse sessions with a heated first wall. After the de scription of the preliminary analyses and tests, and of the main chara cteristics of the power supply and control systems, the experimental r esults of the baking sessions performed during last year are presented .