Radioactivity and heat production characterization by natural gamma ray well logging and multi-fractal techniques in banting district, Malaysia

Natural gamma ray well logging technique is used to characterize the radioactivity (GR) laterally and vertically in Banting district, SW of Malaysia. Seven drilled boreholes, along N-S profile with their natural gamma ray records are utilized to compute the heat production (HP) parameter, based on the Bucker and Rybach relationship.The analysis of 3467 measured points in those boreholes indicates that GR varies between 6.24 API and 358.4 API with an average of 79.95 API, while HP varies between 0.086 and 5.65 μw/m3 with an average of 1.25 μw/m3.The multi-fractal Concentration-Number (C-N) is used to characterize the radioactivity and heat production variations and to isolate different GR and HP populations in the study region. The high radioactivity and heat production ranges are mainly related to the silty clay layers, accompanied by uranium and thorium.