MCNP5 element library least squares method for on-line coal analysis

Abstract

One of the current methods for the on-line analysis of the coal is the neutron inelastic scattering and thermal-capture analysis (NITA) for non-destructive in situ measurements of the elemental concentration of a bulk sample. A prototype apparatus (including detector, fast neutron source, bulk sample and shielding materials) was simulated by using MCNP5 (Monte Carlo N-Particle) software package. In the material card of MCNP5, the concentration of these elements of the synthetic coal sample was used by taking into consideration of the rates of the lignite coal reserve in Aegean Region of Turkey. The histograms of the relation between number of particles and energy of the gamma were converted to Gaussian distribution by using response functions of the BGO detector. With the separate simulation of MgO, Fe 2 O 3 , CaO, Al 2 O 3 , SiO 2 , Sand C, the element library spectrum was obtained in order to fit the spectrum of synthetic coal sample by using MLR (Multiple Linear Regression) method. By using the relation between the coal sample spectrum and the fitted coal spectrum by MLR, the element library least squares (LLs) method was applied to calculate the elemental contents for the relative coal sample.