Patent ID: 11914084
Assignee: FIELD WATER TESTING, LLC
Field: Measurement (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 12:
13. A system for determining whether oil waste at a field testing site selected from an oil waste transport vehicle, water treatment facility, or waste treatment facility, is exempt from naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) waste regulations applicable for a selected region, the system comprising:
a centrifuge for separating oil waste solids from other oil waste components;
one or more BS&W tubes; and
a measurement apparatus comprising:
a detection module comprising a shielded chamber with a plurality of radiation detectors configured to detect and communicate signals indicating a count of disintegrations occurring per predetermined unit of time in an oil waste sample taken from the field testing site;
circuitry configured to receive the signals from the detection module indicating the count of disintegrations;
a processor;
an input interface for entering into the measurement apparatus a value for a percentage of oil waste solids for a sample of the oil waste taken at the field testing site;
an analysis module configured to:
determine an estimated mass of the solids for the sample from the percentage of solids using a first nonlinear transfer function,
determine an estimated maximum radioactivity level using a second nonlinear transfer function, and
determine a normalized maximum radioactivity level per mass unit; and

a waste status module configured to communicate a waste status comprising a NORM exemption status to an entity at the field testing site in response to determining that the normalized maximum radioactivity level per mass unit of the oil waste solids for the sample falls below a NORM waste exemption level for the selected region,
wherein at least a portion of the waste status module and the analysis module comprise one or more of hardware circuits, programmable hardware circuits and executable code, the executable code stored on a memory accessible by the processor.