Abdelfattah Y. Soliman

Concept design of a PGNAA system for optimizing the performance of gravity separators

A detection system for the determination of the level of different layers inside the oil gravity separators is presented. The system is based on prompt gamma neutron activation analysis using D-T neutron source. The performance of the system proved to be superior to current and potential nuclear counting techniques proposed in the literature for the same purpose including neutron backscattering, gamma backscattering, and gamma transmission. According to the concept design calculations using the Monte Carlo method, the proposed system detects the levels of different layers with high accuracy. This concept design is the first stage of the research project entitled “design of an instrument for measurement of oil, water, vapour and sand layers in oil separators using neutrons” supported by King Abdulaziz University.

Concept design of an illicit material detection system

This paper covers the concept design of an illicit material detection system under the project: “Aviation security-Design of a Nuclear Instrument for Contraband Detection” established by King Abdulaziz University. The detection system is composed of two units. The first unit is an X-ray machine which will indicate a location of interest and the second unit is a neutron based system. The motivation of this project is that the design is based on finding the location of the suspicious object inside the luggage by the first unit. This location will be the point of interest for the neutron based detection system. Since checks by the neutron based system are carried out for only suspicious baggage inspected by X-ray inspection system, occasional delays in the neutron based detection system should be acceptable. In this paper, the engineering description of the system is descried and the neutron based system is simulated using Monte Carlo MCNP code.

Detection of illicit material using neutron activation: weakness and solutions

Poisoning the illicit materials by a neutron absorber leads to false detection when the detection is relied on combined thermal neutron activation and fast neutron activation to identify the elements of interest. The use of adjacent transmission thermal neutron detector for verifying the presence of neutron poisons and to trigger an alarm was investigated experimentally and using MCNP calculations. The illicit material of high hydrogen content will affect the detector response in the presence or absence of poisons.

Correction to: Concept design of an illicit material detection system

In the original publication of the article, the Acknowledgement section was missed. The complete Acknowledgement is given in this correction.