RADIASOFT LLC — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 24

Description

Accelerator stewardship applications include: treatment of potable and waste water, removal of pollutants from stack gases, increased efficiency of material processing, and replacement of radioactive sources in sterilization applications. These applications involve exposing significant mass streams to kGy-class radiation fields, which requires: high average electron beam power from 0.5 to 10 MW; wall plug efficiency of 50% or more; operation in harsh industrial settings; and low capital and operating costs. Superconducting rf technology is a possible solution, but is too expensive. Traveling-wave rf structures with modest accelerating gradient are the most promising approach; however, there is no software that provides fast, accurate calculations of beam loading in high-average-power traveling-wave electron accelerators. General statement of how this problem is being addressed We propose to address this important commercial and scientific opportunity through the development and implementation of improved algorithms in an existing two dimensional code that is designed for simulating beam loading in traveling wave electron accelerators. The resulting software will be released to the community with an open source license. Also, the software will be made accessible in the cloud through a graphical user interface that works in all modern web browsers, regardless of operating system. What is to be done in Phase I? During Phase I, we will generalize and improve the software to meet the needs of present researchers, including the following capabilities: improved space charge physics, additional optical elements, long-range wakefield effects, and the import of lectromagnetic field maps. We will enable export of files for interoperability with other codes. We will also develop a prototype browser-based graphical user interface for cloud-based execution of the software. Commercial Applications and Other Benefits Our commercialization strategy is to incorporate improved versions of existing particle accelerator modeling software into our open source cloud-based scientific application framework. We will make the software available to traveling wave linear accelerator designers through a freemium subscription model. During Phase II, the software will be incorporated with other codes to enable cloud-based industrial design of high-average power electron accelerators for a wide range of economically important applications, including a fully capable graphical user interface. Key Words: accelerator stewardship, industrial particle accelerators, traveling wave rf linacs, beam loading