Li dust injection experiments into T-10 tokamak

•A 0D model developed to study T-10 plasmas during Li dust injection.•The deuterium recycling coefficient drops from 0.92 to 0.80 during Li injection.•The effective charge grows during the injection from 2.3 to 3.6.•Li dust injection provides the best recycling conditions at the lowest Li consumption. An improved 0D transport model has been applied to model the deuterium, lithium and carbon densities of T-10 plasmas during Li dust injection. The deuterium recycling coefficient is found to drop from 0.92 to 0.80 during Li dust injection at the expense of higher Zeff values. The dust injection results are compared with the alternative techniques, Li pellet injection and Li evaporation. Dust injection provides the best recycling conditions at the lowest levels of Li consumption.