Real time wall conditioning with lithium powder injection in long pulse H-mode plasmas in EAST with tungsten divertor

•A simple and real-time lithium powder injection technology was tested to facilitate 100 s long pulse H-mode operation on EAST, demonstrating the real-time injection of lithium powder is effective to solve the problem of lifetime limitation of coating film in present and future fusion devices.•The outlined results indicate the real-time injection of lithium powder is contributed to wall conditioning recovery and help sustain stable long pulse H-mode operation by dramatically suppress impurity influx and control edge recycling on EAST with an ITER-like tungsten divertor.•This research suggests that real-time lithium or the other low-Z material powder injection could be an effective method to improve the wall conditioning in future steady-state fusion devices.