Overview of power exhaust experiments in the COMPASS divertor with liquid metals

•Power exhaust of a CPS liquid metal divertor target in ELMy conditions is reported.•Good power handling of Li and LiSn up to ~12 MW/m2 and ELM energy fluence 15 kJ/m2.•No droplets directly ejected from the CPS mesh and no damage of the latter observed.•No contamination of the core and SOL plasmas by tin was observed.•Neutral Li is very well localized in the close vicinity of the CPS mesh.