Development of an environmental monitoring station for HPGe detectors
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15392/bjrs.v9i1A.1412Keywords:
Arduino, HPGe, environmental monitoringAbstract
Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) is a well-established nondestructive analytic technique where the gamma radiation emitted by an irradiated sample is analyzed using an HPGe detector. The Neutron Activation Laboratory (LAN) of IPEN-CNEN/SP has been performing NAA analyses for over 30 years, and has plans of implementing quality control protocols to their analyses. In this sense, the environmental monitoring of the laboratories where the detectors are used has been performed for many years, in a manual way with no more than 2 measurements per day. In this work, an automated monitoring station based on a microcontroller Arduino UNO board has been developed which comprises four thermo hygrometer sensors for monitoring different parts of the environment, plus a thermocouple for monitoring the inside of the liquid nitrogen dewar. The results obtained allow for a discussion on the performance and adequacy of the sensors.Downloads
References
FERREIRA, M. D. C. Estudo da eficiência de um detector HPGe por métodos semiempíricos e experimental, Belo Horizonte: CDTN, 2012.
STRATTON, G. Comparison of a High Purity Germanium Gamma Ray Spectrometer and a Multidimensional NaI(Tl) Scintillation Gamma Ray Spectrometer, San Luis Obispo: California Polytechnic State University, 2011.
SUTTON, C. Effect of environmental variables upon in-situ gamma spectrometry data, In: 1999 Waste Testing and Quality Assurance Symposium, 1999, Washington D.C., Proceedings, Washington D. C..
MEI-WO, Y.; AHMAD, Z.; MANSOR, I. A study of factors affecting the quality of measurements in gamma spectrometry counting systems, In: Technical Meeting on Signal Processing and Electronics for Nuclear Spectrometry, 2007, Vienna, Proceedings, p. 81-92.
EVANS, M.; NOBLE, J.; HOCHENBAUM, J. Arduino in Action, Shelter Island: Manning, 2013.
SCERVINI, M. Thermocouples: The Operating Principles, Cambridge: University of Cambridge, 2009. Available at: <https://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/utc/thermocouple/pages/ThermocouplesOperatingPrinciples.html>. Last Accessed 03 Jun 2020.
MAXIM INTEGRATED PRODUCTS MAX31855 Cold-Junction Compensated Thermocouple to Digital Converter Datasheet, Sunnyvale: Maxim Integrated Products, 2015. Available at: <https://datasheets.maximintegrated.com/en/ds/MAX31855.pdf> Last Accessed: 03 Jun 2020.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2021 Brazilian Journal of Radiation Sciences
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Licensing: The BJRS articles are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
How to Cite
