| NUKLEONIKA 2011, 56(4):283-289
COMPUTER SIMULATION OF TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION
ON A SOLID TARGET FOR 201Tl PRODUCTION
Mohammad R. Aboudzadeh Rovais, Kamran Yousefi, Khosro Ardaneh, Mohammad Mirzaii
Agricultural, Medical and Industrial Research School (AMIRS),
Nuclear Science and Technology Research Institute (NSTRI),
P. O. Box 31485-498, Karaj, Iran
Thallium-201 is of great interest in nuclear medicine for diagnostic purposes. It is produced by the 203Tl(p,3n)201Pb nuclear reaction. Since the target for 201Tl production is a solid target and the maximum beam current for the irradiation has a direct relation with its temperature surface, therefore, the control of temperature during the irradiation is essential. Designing a proper cooling system is one of the important and determining parameters in radionuclide production efficiency. Non-controlled temperature would cause melting and consequently loss of target materials that could be very costly especially when an isotopically enriched material is used. In this study, the heat transfer and temperature distribution on the target has been simulated based on a computational fluid dynamics (CDF) code for the thermal behavior of the target during the irradiation and under the different beam currents, cooling flow rates and target designing. The results on the routinely used target for the production of 201Tl in AMIRS, showed that
there was a good linearity between proton beam currents (in the range of 100–350 µA) and maximum temperature
on the thallium target (345–458 K). The results also showed that the flow rate of the cooling water can be brought down (from routinely used 45 L/min) to 15 L/min without any risk of melting of target material.
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