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. 2021 Jan 7;21(2):352.
doi: 10.3390/s21020352.

An Easily Integrable Industrial System for Gamma Spectroscopic Analysis and Traceability of Stones and Building Materials

Marco Marini  1 , Silvia Panicacci  1 , Massimiliano Donati  1 , Luca Fanucci  1 , Erica Fanchini  2 , Andrea Pepperosa  2 , Massimo Morichi  2 , Matteo Albéri  3   4 , Enrico Chiarelli  3   5 , Michele Montuschi  3   5 , Kassandra Giulia Cristina Raptis  3   5 , Andrea Serafini  3   5 , Virginia Strati  3   5 , Fabio Mantovani  3   5
Affiliations

An Easily Integrable Industrial System for Gamma Spectroscopic Analysis and Traceability of Stones and Building Materials

Marco Marini et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

In the building material and stones market, lots of restrictions are coming in different world zones. In Europe, a recent regulatory set up the maximum level of radiological emissions for materials intended for use in public and private building structures. For this reason, companies need to have a very efficient radiological measurements system in their production chain, in order to respect all the rules and to be competitive in the world market. This article describes CORSAIR, a Cloud-Oriented Measurement System for Radiological Investigation and Traceability of Stones. Our cyber-physical system consists of sensing nodes network connected to a data collection gateway through LoRaWAN protocol, and interfaces with a centralized cloud application. CORSAIR introduces a fast, repeatable, real-time and non-destructive method to measure radiological emissions and other parameters of each single building material item, uniquely identified by an applied RFID tag. The validity of this system is confirmed by in-situ measurement campaign compared with high-precision laboratory analysis. The results demonstrate the accuracy of the CORSAIR sensor and the possibility to easily integrate it in the company production chain without any change.

Keywords: Cloud; LoRa; NORM; RFID; WiFi; building material; euratom; gamma spectroscopy; industry; industry 4.0.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
CORSAIR equipment architecture.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Cloud platform WEB page showing information about a block previously registered and measured.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Local monitoring system architecture.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(a) Photo of the shielded CeBr3 detector coupled to the PMT and to CAEN GammaStream. (b) Photo of the CORSAIR sensor node enveloped by its shock-proof case.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Web-based User Interface of data gateway to monitor the information coming from all company’s sensors.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Web-based User Interface of data gateway showing measured material items owed by the company.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Material block certification generated by data gateway from company side.
Figure 8
Figure 8
The main user interface of CORSAIR App.
Figure 9
Figure 9
CORSAIR App fragment for the insertion of some information about a new block.
Figure 10
Figure 10
CORSAIR App screen after identification of sensor node and ID block, ready to start a new measurement procedure.
Figure 11
Figure 11
CORSAIR App screen that shows information about sensor node and allows the user to control it.
Figure 12
Figure 12
WAM procedure is applied to an experimental gamma spectrum measured by CORSAIR. The analysis is performed on the 40K, 214Bi and 208Tl energy windows, representative of the K, U and Th decay chains, respectively. For each window, the method enables the estimation of the contributions coming from the different decay chains, here depicted in different colours.
Figure 13
Figure 13
(a) Photo of the CORSAIR equipment during the M1 measurement on sand. (b) Photo of the equipment performing the M2 measurement on a typical 3×3×2 m3 granite block.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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