As an international active and renowned manufacturer, supplier and service provider for devices, systems and systems for the contactless detection of various process parameters (e.g. density and humidity) mainly of bulk materials (e.g. coal and potassium salt) we want to offer our customers the most effective solutions for their processes.
The possible technical solutions are ultimately defined by analyzing the customer processes and the operating conditions on site. You can find out how these can look in this section.
Potasssium salts are mainly used today as mineral fertilizers in agriculture.
They are initially mined in underground mining and then processed further.
However, this degradation is always accompanied by sodium chloride, with more than 3 tons of spoil salts with 96% table salt being produced per ton of potash obtained, the potash content itself is only between 20 and 35%.
Therefore it is important to determine the potash content on site in order to find the most profitable mining zones.
Potash fertilizer usually has a purity of more than 90 percent, which corresponds to a potassium content of around 60 percent and therefore leads to the designation “60 Potash”, whereas the high-purity 99 Potassium Chloride or industrial potash is used in the chemical industry and medicine, while chloride-sensitive Agricultural plant fertilizer is used, which mainly consists of potassium sulfate.
The naturally occurring potassium consists of isotopes, one of which is the radioactive isotope K-40.
This emits 2 different types of rays:
● ß particles are electrons and therefore cannot irradiate large layers of material
● γ-rays are electromagnetic waves like X-rays and can penetrate walls.
Both types of rays have advantages to be measured:
● ß-radiation is emitted much more strongly, so that the measurement could be more precise in a short time and it can also be advantageous that only a little material is required for the measurement, although of course a small sample is not as representative as a larger one.
● γ-radiation even irradiates 1 m salt. The measurement can be considered representative of a 2 m diameter sphere if the detector can measure a 4 pi geometry. If this amount is not available, it helps to measure only half a sphere with a so-called surface probe. Measuring even smaller amounts would include an error in changes in bulk density or thickness
Each of the methods described therefore has its preferred areas of application:
● For good representativity and in cases where a steel wall has to be irradiated, the measurement with the gamma radiation is sufficient.
● In laboratories and on small layers, however, the ß radiation must be measured.
Both described measurement methods described a different detector type:
● γ-radiation is normally measured with a scintillation counter, the sensitive part of which is a NaJ crystal
● The ß particles can be measured with a counter tube or again with a scintillation counter.
Since the ß-rays are absorbed by very thin layers, the counter tube must be made of thin and light material such as aluminum, with corrosion and mechanical sensitivity being significant disadvantages
Another way is to use a plastic scintillation material, which is not as cheap as a counter tube, but is more sensitive and robust, which is why devices with plastic scintillation counters are used for the ß measurement in laboratory analyzers and for continuous measurements on filters.
However, applications for γ measurement cannot be counted, which is why they can be found on or in funnels, or brine containers or wherever there is enough salt.
A special application is the measurement of γ radiation on a tape, the material of which is not sufficient to achieve the saturation layer thickness.
The simple measurement of the K-40 radiation is influenced by the variation of the bulk density and the layer, which is why the load must also be measured - either with a radiometric or an electromechanical belt scale so that the weight determined in this way can be used to correct the error to correct the changing loading of the conveyor belt.
Not to forget at this point are two more potassium meters from the RGI product range:
● The first is a surface knife that is held against the wall.
● The other portable instrument is a borehole measuring device, the probe rod for measuring the potash concentration is sunk into a previously created borehole in the wall to be measured.
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You can get help and advice on the selection of the measuring system that best suits your application
from our experts in process measurement technology.