On 3 August, FRIB successfully circulated liquid lithium and established a lithium film in its charge stripper.

FRIB is the first in the world to use liquid lithium as a charge stripper, marking a new era in stripper development history.

The lithium charge stripper will play a critical role in the FRIB linear accelerator in order to achieve design-goal beam energies beyond 200 mega electron volt/nucleon (MeV/u) and beam power up to 400 kilowatts (kW). This successful first circulation demonstrates that the system functions properly. It is a significant step toward future work on lithium stripper production.

During operation, the liquid lithium needs to be continuously circulated with a pump to produce the film. For this purpose, an electromagnetic pump was designed and fabricated based on original concepts developed by Argonne National Laboratory.

All systems were properly designed and implemented to work concurrently. The circulation was successful due to the effort of mechanical and controls engineers.

Following the first circulation in August, in September, the lithium charge stripper completed 50 hours of continuous attended operations with round-the-clock monitoring by trained operators. The stripper operated safely, reliably, and stably. The next step is to operate the system without direct supervision.