Tomography of solid materials
View Patent ↗The invention provides a method for the identification of deposits of solid materials in process plants, the method comprising the creation of a theee-dimensional image by means of tomography, preferably passive tomography, most preferably gamma-ray tomography. Typically, the solid materials comprise gamma-ray emitting solid materials and the process plants comprise nuclear process plants. In general, the deposits of solid materials are deposited from liquid media, and the liquid media preferably comprise aqueous suspensions of these materials. The method is particularly applicable to highly active nuclear waste liquids in High Activity Storage Tank (HAST) applications, and offers significant advantages over the methods of the prior art, since it comprises a non-invasive technique which does not require the prior installation of a detector in the vessel from which data are to be obtained.
1. A method for the identification of deposits of solid materials in process plants, said method comprising the creation of a three-dimensional image by means of tomography.
2. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said tomography comprises passive tomography.
3. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said tomography comprises gamma-ray tomography.
4. A method as claimed in claim 3 wherein said solid materials comprise gamma-ray emitting solid materials and said process plants comprise nuclear process plants.
5. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said deposits of solid materials comprise deposits which are deposited from gaseous media.
6. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said deposits of solid materials comprise deposits which are deposited from liquid media.
7. A method as claimed in claim 6 wherein said liquid media comprise liquid suspensions of said solid materials.
8. A method as claimed in claim 7 wherein said liquid suspensions of said solid materials comprise suspensions of said solid materials in organic solvents.
9. A method as claimed in claim 7 wherein said liquid suspensions of said solid materials comprise aqueous suspensions of said solid materials.
10. A method as claimed in claim 9 wherein said aqueous suspensions of said solid materials comprise highly active nuclear waste liquids.
11. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein said deposits comprise accumulations of said solid materials occurring in storage tanks.
12. A method as claimed in claim 11 wherein said storage tanks comprise large scale storage tanks.
13. A method as claimed in claim 11 wherein said storage tanks have a diameter of around two meters or less.
14. A method as claimed in claim ( 1 ) wherein said deposits comprise accumulations of said solid materials in pipework used to transfer liquid media between vessels.
15. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the identification of said solid deposits comprises the identification of the location of said deposits and the identification of the geometry of said deposits.
16. A method as claimed in claim 1 which comprises the measurement of emissions from process equipment and the manipulation of the obtained data in order to generate a three-dimensional image.
17. A method as claimed in claim 16 wherein said measurement of emissions is achieved by means of an array of sensors.
18. A method as claimed in claim 16 wherein said measurement of emissions comprises measurement of gamma-ray emissions.
19. A method as claimed in claim 16 wherein said manipulation of the obtained data in order to generate a three-dimensional image comprises manipulation by means of a computer algorithm.
20. A method as claimed in claim 16 wherein said manipulation of the obtained data involves the computation of a solution to the Boltzmann equation for gamma-ray transport.
21. A method for the identification of deposits of solid materials in process plants, said method comprising the creation of a three-dimensional image by means of tomography wherein said deposits comprise accumulations of said solid materials occurring in storage tanks and said storage tanks are large scale storage tanks comprising High Activity Storage Tanks.
22. A method for the identification of deposits of solid materials in process plants, said method comprising the creation of a three-dimensional image by means of tomography, wherein said tomography comprises gamma-ray tomography which is adapted for the production of two images, the first of these showing the distribution of the sources of gamma-ray emissions and the other depicting the structure of the attenuating medium between the sources and the detectors.