Patent ID: 9274247
Filing Date: 2016-03-01
CPC Classification: G01N,G01T

Claim Text:
1. An apparatus inserted into and used in conjunction with a separation tank containing liquid pumped out of land from in-land or offshore drilling, and used to analyze the contents and density of the liquid at different levels within the separation tank, the apparatus comprising: a. an array of nuclear sources, each nuclear source including a source holder, said source holder having radiation proof walls enclosing an interior chamber, wherein at least one of said radiation proof walls including an opening; b. a nuclear source of gamma radiation located within said interior chamber and configured to emit a nuclear gamma radiation beam through said opening; c. a collimator aligned with said opening and configured to spread said nuclear gamma radiation beam emitted through said opening; d. an array of detector modules, each individual detector module enclosed in a housing, said housing having walls and an interior opening, said each individual detector module further including a scintillation crystal configured to convert incident nuclear gamma radiation to visible photons, a silicon photomultiplier chip configured to convert incident photons emitted by said scintillation crystal to electrical signals, an electrical pulse generator configured to receive said electrical signals and generate electrical pulses corresponding to said incident nuclear gamma radiation, and an electrical pulse summing member configured to sum a number of electrical pulses generated by said electrical pulse generator; and e. a liquid analysis member configured to receive said summed electrical pulses from each of said individual detector modules; f. wherein said array of nuclear sources and said array of detector modules are retained within a liquid in a tank such that each nuclear source is aligned with a corresponding said individual detector module in opposition to each other and separated by a gap, said nuclear gamma radiation beam emitted through said opening and spread by said collimator traverses said gap and impinges upon said scintillation crystal of the corresponding said individual detector module; g. wherein said liquid analysis member configured to determine a density of said liquid and a percentage of sand, water, emulsion and oil in the separation tank for each nuclear source and corresponding detector module pair based on said received summed pulses from each of said electrical pulse generator.