Investigation of remote sensing scale up for hot cell waste tank applications. CPAC optical moisture monitoring

This report discusses work done to investigate the feasibility of using non-contact optical absorption to remotely sense the surface moisture content of salt cake materials. Optical measurements were made in a dimensionally scaled setup to investigate this technique for in-situ waste tank applications. Moisture measurements were obtained from BY-104 simulant samples with 0 wt%, 10 wt%, and 20 wt% moisture content using the back-scattered light from a pulsed infrared optical parametric converter (OPC) laser source operating from 1.51 to 2.12 micron. An InGaAs detector, with 0.038 steradian solid angle (hemisphere = 6.28 steradians) collection angle was used to detect the back-scattered light. This work indicated that there was sufficient back-scatter from the BY-104 material to provide an indication of the surface moisture content