Characterization of electrochemical cell for production of radiotracer in organic medium

• Autor(a) principal: Hernandes, Érica Kenup
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Brandão, Luis Eduardo Barreira, Instituto de Engenharia Nuclear
• Tipo de documento: Artigo de conferência
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional do IEN
• Texto Completo: http://carpedien.ien.gov.br:8080/handle/ien/2319
• topic: Oil pipelines; Petrochemical plant

In a petrochemical plant, precise knowledge of the flow of the compounds that flow inside the pipelines that carry oil and these derivatives is crucial. To perform these controls a series of flow meters are installed inside ducts in direct contact with the fluid to be monitored. This invasive method presents a great limitation because the oil aggressive proprieties that require these measurement devices are subjected to frequent calibrations which, in turn, cause the stoppage of the plant and low productivity. In this sense, radiotracers has been used in conjunction with the time transient method, by configuring a precise and non-invasive measurement technique. This work presents the study of the characterization of an electrolytic cell model for the production of petroleum derivatives labeled with Iodine-123 for use as radiotracer in the measurement of flow in ducts and the time transient method. Labelling of organic compounds usually a sequence of solvent separation and extraction steps which, when used for labeling oil and oil derivatives it causes high gamma exposition for the operator at considerable dose rates due to the need for direct interaction with the marking system. The objective of this work is to develop a cell model that is part of a compact, automatically operated labelling system with physics and chemistry parameters defined to optimize the organic phase labelling processes of petroleum derivatives. The labelling cell is composed of a cylindrical reaction vessel where the aqueous medium containing the iodine-123 in the form of sodium iodide (NaI-I123) is inserted with about 2 mCi of activity and the organic medium. In the system are introduced, two Platinum electrodes where a voltage of 0. 8 V is applied. This system allows the production of radiotracer for a rapid pulse injection. The results show that there was no significant variation of the stability of the system in the temperature range of 25 °C to 40 °C and showed a labelling efficiency around 85%.