The development of radioactive gas imaging for the study of chemical flow processes

摘要

The development and use of functional medical imaging has grown rapidly in importance over the last few decades. The field of medicine primarily uses nuclear imaging techniques for the non-invasive study of physiological processes within the human body. At the University of Birmingham a considerable research effort has been made into adapting these techniques for the study of flow and mixing in solid and liquid systems. However, despite capability, little work has been reported on imaging gases for industrial use. The emission tomography techniques available at Birmingham were adapted and utilised for the study of gaseous flow processes. The work presented in this thesis provides details of the development of a radioactive gas imaging technique capable of studying chemical flow processes. Feasibility studies were performed to compare the capabilities of Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) for imaging dynamic gas flows in a gas fluidised bed, a bubble column and a low pressure adsorption column leading to a more detailed study of CO(_2) adsorption at high pressure using PET. In order to verify the technique a comparison between breakthrough data obtained using a CO(_2) analyser and the PET image data was made and a qualitative study of the adsorption kinetics inside the column is provided.