Development of data acquisition technique for computed tomography of simplified distillation column model as used in petroleum and petrochemical plants

Abstract

This dissertation propose the development of data acquisition technique for computed tomography of simplified distillation column model as used in petroleum and petrochemical industries. The aim of this dissertation is to apply the computed tomography technique to inspect the internal structure of distillation column regardless of complex system to move radiation detectors and source. The developed data acquisition technique allows the operator to move radiation detectors and radiation source by follow designed algorithm. The scanning data are reconstructed using filtered back projection algorithm to evaluate internal structure at the region of interest from cross sectional reconstructed image. In this dissertation, simulation using MCNP was assisted in order to obtain the transmitted gamma radiation profiles through different size pipe objects and use them as prior knowledge information. Three data acquisition techniques were designed afterward using same diameter and thickness of pipes which lead to results that all three data acquisition techniques had similar results which maximum error less than 15% when measuring the pipe diameter. However, the reconstructed image could not display a thickness of pipe objects. Moreover, the designed data acquisition algorithms were extended to other experiments which successfully provided consistency results compared to the real situation in model. This developed data acquisition technique is useful and can be applied to scanning of large object in industries..