Developments in Pulsed Neutron Activation for Determination of Water Flow in Pipes

In PNA (pulsed neutron activation) it is important that the measured data can be related to the total mass flow. In this thesis two fundamental problems of the measurement technique and data treatment have been investigated: transport/mixing and background radiation. The principle of PNA is to introduce a radioactive substance into a pipe by bombarding fluid in the pipe with neutron pulses. The fluid in the pipe is activated and subsequently transported and mixed with the flow. Gamma radiation emitted from the activity is measured with one or two detectors downstream from the activation point. The time-resolved signal from the detectors is used to calculate the average velocity of the water flow. Due to the short distance between the neutron generator and the pipe the activity in the pipe becomes highly inhomogeneous. The transport and mixing of the activity were simulated using colour which was injected into the flow. It was found that the inhomogeneous activity distribution must be taken into account if the precision of the measurements is to be improved. The shape of the background in PNA affects the shape and position of the time spectrum. The nature of the background has been determined using one detector upstream and one downstream of the neutron generator. The background was shown to be caused by sup 1 sup 6 N. A method that subtracts the background from the PNA time spectrum was also developed