Radiation effects on alanine; thermal approach for estimation of low absorbed radiation doses

Abstract

Irradiated alanine when heated in differential scanning calorimetry cell (DSC) gives thermal profiles which have varying decomposition temperatures correlated to absorbed radiation dose between 0 to 250 Gy with high precision. Higher absorbed doses give characteristic decomposition peaks in DSC thermal profile. DSC studies indicate that changes in the thermal profiles are mainly due to exothermic decomposition of peroxides. Based on the information, it may be possible to develop a low cost and simple thermal device for estimating low absorbed doses in industrial radiation processing applications.