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

Claim 0:
1. A measurement apparatus for determining whether oil waste at a field testing site selected from an oil transport vehicle, a water treatment facility, or a waste treatment facility, is exempt from selected naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) waste regulations applicable for a selected region, the 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;
a measurement controller comprising:
circuitry configured to receive the signals from the detection module indicating the count of disintegrations;
a processor;
an input interface configured 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 and for initiating a radioactivity count;
an analysis module configured to:
determine, using a first nonlinear transfer function, an estimated mass of the oil waste solids for the sample from the percentage of solids entered via the input interface;
determine, using a second nonlinear transfer function, an estimated maximum radioactivity level; 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.