Pipe corrosion and deposit study using neutron- and gamma- radiation sources

The problems of corrosion and deposit are crucial issues in the pipelines of the chemical, nuclear and petrochemical industries. Radiography (neutron, gamma, X-ray) has long been used as a technique for pipe inspection and corrosion monitoring. The 10 MW Budapest research reactor site is a source of various energy neutron (thermal and epithermal) and gamma radiation. The detector system was a Peltier-cooled LLL CCD camera controlled by a PC with Image ProLite software and imaging plate equipment with a BAS 2500 scanner that used AIDA software. The objects inspected were corroded tubes and various kinds of test specimens with a large wall thickness (25 mm) inside and outside steps. In the evaluation part we used tomographic algorithms. A software simulation study was made as well. Fan-beam projections were computed of the given software phantoms and a new discrete tomography method was used to reconstruct the unknown objects from these projections.