Neutron Activation and Layout Optimization Experiments by MCNP Code for the Main Elements of Cement

Abstract

Iran is the fourth largest cement producing country in the world, and one of the pioneers in this industry. For this reason, study and further research in the fields related to the cement industry are of great importance. The cement conveyor on-line analyzer systems use the prompt gamma neutron activation analysis (PGNAA) method. In this paper, based on the same method a comparative analysis for three samples of cement with certain elements was carried out. Prior to the experiment, porameters such as moderator thickness and size of samples were optimized by the MCNP code. In this experiment, the relative counts of the obtained spectra were calculated and plotted by subtraction of the continued background of three cement samples for each of the main peaks of the energy (3.539 and 4.935MeV for Si, 4.418 and 6.419 MeV for Ca, 5.92 and 7.630 MeV for Fe and 7.725 MeV for Al). Then, the qualitative and relative analyses of the main elements of cement were performed and compared with the actual values. At last, according to the calculated errors for each element of the peak energy, feasibility studies and laboratory experiments were carried out. These experiments were carried out by an Am-Be neutron source with an activity of 555GBq (15Ci) and a NaI detector.

Keywords

• analysis
• cement
• neutron activation
• optimization
• mcnp
• pgnaa