Radiation Diagnostics of Pipelines and Equipment of Oil and Gas Production Complexes

Abstract

An alert indicating the formation of salt deposits in the pipelines of oil and gas production complexes reduces the financial losses associated with the removal of these deposits and the loss of production. A method of taking into account the presence of the native radionuclide ²³²Th and its decay product ²⁰⁸Tl in the deposits is proposed for performing radiation diagnostics of pipelines. The appearance of the deposits is identified according to the 2.614 MeV γ-rays. The thickness of the deposits is determined according to the attenuation of the γ-rays from an external thorium dioxide source placed on the outer surface of a pipe. Calculations confirmed the presence of 1–2 mm thick deposits with probability 0.9 and a false positive rate of 0.01 in 1 h measurements with background 3 counts/sec. A ²³²Th-based external source with activity 10⁵ and 10⁶ Bq makes it possible to determine deposit thicknesses 2.5–3 and 1–2 mm, respectively, with measurement time 1 h and error about 15%.