Low‐Energy Electron Beam Technologies: Deriving Value from Waste

Abstract

Electron beam is an ionizing technology. There are several types of electron accelerators around the world in terms of their electron energies they generate. They can range from several hundred keV to a few MeV. Low energy electron beams can only be used to treat the surfaces of materials and are generally considered to be operating up to 300 keV. Low energy electron beam therefore requires considerably less amount of shielding than high energy electron beam sources. Low energy electrons, even though they are initially moving at approximately half the speed of light, they can only penetrate about 500-600 µm in water before the dose being delivered has been reduced to 40-70 % of the dose. Depth-dose curves can be used with fairly good accuracy to determine the depths of penetration by electrons in different materials. There are several commercial suppliers of low energy electron beam equipment. Low energy X-rays can also be generated from low energy electron beam machines. There are several applications of low energy electron beam such as curing, crosslinking, degradation, grafting and microbial inactivation.