Laboratory experiments and modeling for industrial radiotracer applications.

This paper presents three laboratory experiments, which have been carried out using the Molybdenum-99 (Mo(99)) radiotracer to measure the residence time distribution (RTD), the mixing time and the flow rate in a water flow rig. The results of the RTD measurement experiment are preprocessed using the MATLAB software for background correction, radioactive decay correction, starting point correction, filtering, and data extrapolation. After preprocessing, six mathematical models are investigated on this data using the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) RTD software. The parameters of each model are optimized to calculate the value of the RTD, and to determine the model, which gives the best match with the practical data. The selected model with the best match is used to calculate the RTD in this experiment. The mixing time experiment is carried out for different rotation speeds and repeated three times in each case. The results show that the mixing time is inversely proportional to the rotation speed. The flow rate experiment is carried out to measure the flow rate in the flow rig. The experimental results show a high reliability of the radiotracer used in the RTD, mixing time and flow rate measurements. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.