In industrial plants such as electricity generating, petroleum, chemical and petrochemical plants, pipelines are used extensively to transport liquid from one location to another. In radiation vulcanization of natural rubber latex (RVNRL) plants, pipelines are also used to transport latex to storage tank. During one of its maintenance activities, a pipeline intelligent gauge (PIG) that was used to monitor pipe integrity jammed inside the pipe causing interruption to its operation or loading activities. Sealed source technology was utilized to determine the location of jammed PIG in the pipeline. Fast neutrons from a 50 mCi Americium Beryllium (AmBe241), with energy range between 0.5 to11 MeV, were used for the study. Helium 3 (He3) detector was used to detect slow neutrons having a range of energy of 30 eV- 0.5 MeV. The investigation was carried out using neutron backscatter technique scanner. By adopting back-scattered technique, the location of jammed PIG in the pipeline has been successfully determined.
Non-destructive and real time method becomes a well-liked method to researchers in the oil palm
industry since 2000. This method has the ability to detect oil content in order to increase the
production of oil palm for better profit. Hence, this research investigates the potential of neutron
source to estimate oil content in palm oil fruit since oil palm contains hydrogen with chemical
formula C55H96O6. For this paper, oil palm loose fruit was being used and divided into three
groups. These three groups are ripe, under-ripe and bruised fruit. A total of 21 loose fruit for each
group were collected from a private plantation in Malaysia. Each sample was scanned using
neutron backscattered technique. The higher neutron count, the more hydrogen content, and the
more oil content in palm oil fruit. The best correlation result came from the ripe fruits with r2=0.98.
This research proves that neutron backscattered technique can be used as a non-destructive and
real time grading system for palm oil.